Abjection in Love is a Dog From Hell

In her essay The Powers of Horror Julia Kristeva explores abjection. Abjection is a dark and vile threat that, at once, the subject is attracted to but repulsed from, something that 'beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced.'(Kristeva, 1982) Abjection exists outside of the subject and the object, but dangerously close to both.  In it's most elementary form, abjection can be described through food loathing. The teary eyes, bile build-up, and stomach spasms caused by a food I have no taste for is an example of the repulsion abjection stirs up. My draw towards the food in the first place exemplifies abjection's cruel game of summon and repulsion. We see abjection surface in Bukowski's narrative relations to women. He is at once drawn to women while also (and immediately) jettisoned away from them. In one poem he might celebrate the glory of a good fuck, while in the next he may lament the shortcomings of the woman from whom he most recently split or swiftly show her the door followed by expelling waste from his body. A casual reading of Love is a Dog from Hell reveals this erotic tennis match the poet plays with himself. He is at once caught up in a desire so strong, so overwhelming he declares:

"I feel her inside of my
wrists and the back of my eyes,
and the toes and legs and belly
of me feel her and
the other part too,
and all of Los Angeles falls down
and weeps for joy,"
(Bukowski, 1977)

 And his readership collectively feels the splashdown of a storm after a Summer heatwave, windows wide open and wood floors bubbling under the weight of the water. In this verse, the poetic voice is drawn to women within a symbolic order he considers within the scope of the 'possible, the tolerable and the thinkable' (Kristeva, 1982). Women fall within a set of laws he can understand and live by. This relationship to women is symbolic but does not challenge his capacity to formulate what 'woman' is beyond that which is before him. It is akin to viewing pictures of personal items belonging to victims of the Auschwitz gas chambers, without connecting them to death. They are both sanitized, symbolic representations of something far less possible, tolerable or thinkable for the respective viewers. Abjection reaches its apex when the connection to meaning is made. For Bukowski, this means a woman who falls short of replacing his mother. He runs, haphazard, to the other end of the court returning his own serve, in repulsion,

"then I said goodbye
hungup
went into the crapper and
took a good beershit
mainly thinking, well,
I'm still alive
and have the ability to expell
wastes from my body.
and poems.
and as long as that's happening
I have the ability to handle
betrayal
lonliness
hangnail
clap
and the economic reports in the
financial section"
(Bukowski, 1977)

 We turn our heads away, close our eyes so as to shut out the images as though they were graphic illustrations on the page. Some readers may even close the book and put it on the shelf, or worse, dismiss it from their collection. Occasionally, he flirts with giving up this game while resting between sets and speaks lucidly of women as "that thing that no longer signifies anything"(Kristeva, 1982) . He speaks of

 "another bed
another woman
more curtains
another bathroom
another kitchen
other eyes
other hair
other
feet and toes.
everybody's looking.
the eternal search."
(Bukowski, 1977)

 Despite abjection and flirtations, however, he continues the search for the woman that fits his living universe. This is where we (and the writer) catch our breath, return pulse rates to normal and maybe reach for a glass of water.

Charles Bukowski's sexual poetics in Love is a Dog from Hell   exemplify Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. Woman, as both object and subject, exists for Bukowski within a restrictive symbolic system. He is at once attracted to what he thinks woman ought to be and repulsed by what he finds she is not. For Bukowski, the cycle continues "unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion"(Kristeva, 1982) Confrontation with woman as an ontological being in opposition to him thrusts him into a state of abjection, then back again and so on.


Citations
Bukowski, Charles. (1977). texan. In Love is a Dog from Hell (pp. 39-40)  New York, Ecco. 
Bukowski, Charles. (1977). me. In Love is a Dog from Hell (pp. 31-32)  New York, Ecco. 
Bukowski, Charles. (1977). another bed. In Love is a Dog from Hell (pp. 33-34)  New York, Ecco. 
Kristeva, Julia. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection New York, Columbia University Press.