Bukowski the Alien

Where does Bukowski fit in? Is he the voice of the working class? Is he a womanizer destined for the pits of misogynistic Hell? Is he a Beat with grey hair? Should the universities listen a little closer to what he has to say?

I'm not sure there is a perfect place for Bukowski, but he is certainly not The Proletariat's hero. Bukowski is subject to as much miss-treatment, insubordination, degradation, inequity, inhumanity, disregard, and flippancy as any other member of the working class. Like most humans, he is held prisoner to a primordial 'fight or flight' instinct. With fingers bent back by bosses, conventions, and expectations of a society he debases with spectacular acuity he'll eventually break the grip and run like mad over the hills, arms flailing, or give a hard left followed by several rights to the perpetrator. When it comes to the work place, he tends to advocate running. He does not square off for the rights of the worker, dropping the gloves out back of the factory or on the docks for a fair man-to-man battle with the suit in power. Winner take all. Rather, he cowers like a hurt animal moving from one low paying job to another, cutting out midway for a drink, hoping against hope that the next stop will be a little less painful than the last. He offers, after all, little more than his time "I've given you my time. It's all I've got to give-it's all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour."(Factotum) He peels each day of work off his back like a scab not quite ready to fall off, baring unprotected baby skin underneath still not ready to face the world alone. Let's not confuse the iconic wordsmith with the unions of our nations who have brought us true equity and fair treatment in our factories!

So where does he fit in, then, if he's not the working class saviour touted on so many book jackets, on-line reference-pedias, and essays on the writer? He seems to me to have evaded compartmentalization. Both his own writing and several valiant efforts at biographies on the writer reveal a certain period of flirtation with The Beats. Burroughs is the only beat known to have openly snubbed him. The friendships he did keep were incomplete, partially due to a sort of unfortunate series of compromises. The Beats were stationed in San Fran., he resided in L.A., they were recreating sexual identification, he believed men mated with women, they enjoyed drugs and hallucinogens, he loved his alcohol and so on. He had a tenacity for breaking friendships by bastardizing them in exaggerated, defamatory stories where, by default, he was the hero. Many close friendships were destroyed this way. The academics invited him with open arms into their universities. He responded with piss poor readings, insults, and trashing their homes during the after party. Healthy heterosexual relationships were not for him, as we well know. Unless you consider excessive verbal abuse and occasional fist fights to be status quo. For this, he has been duly beaten with the sceptre of the feminists. Homosexual acquaintances were also in the firing line of verbal degradation and extreme prejudice. One might go so far as to say homophobia. Where else can we find a place for him? With his parents, perhaps? Unconditional love, right? Only if that includes weekly beatings with a strap from his father while his mother looks on uninterested. It is documented that his slow speaking style is not natural, but rather environmental. It emerged when he was a child. He planned each word very carefully before he said it to ensure there were no slip-ups that would inadvertently anger his whip-happy father.

So where does one put Charles Bukowski? On my bookshelf  he stands, shaking just a little, in front of William S. Burroughs and Judith Butler, both of whom would be happy to blow his head off for their own reasons, I am sure.