My high school, a gorgeous yellow building with a sloping red tiled roof, was nestled among the trees and overlooked a calm lake. Idyllic. We had a skating rink, a basketball courts, a sports field, woods all around, a cemetary, a convent with austere nuns, residential quarters with affluential boarding kids, and best of all - a calm, quiet library. The library was my haven. Wooden cupboards with glass doors lined the walls. The books arranged alphabetically by authors last name in each cupboard and increasing in difficulty and reading level as you went from one cupboard to the next. We started at the first cupboard near the entry way in sixth grade and then slowly made our way to the hallowed shelves at the back right next to the desk of the stern librarian. Shelves to which access was restricted. In a very Oliver Twist porridge scene style, I remember standing in front of the strict librarian asking "Please ma'am, may I have the keys to the cupboards with the classics?".
And here's where I pause to think. The same library that gave me my love for books and reading is unfortunately also the same library that conditioned me to believe in the superiority of British writing. Until today, when talking about poetry and poets, I automatically tend to refer to the English poets from the Romantic era (Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, Keats, Byron...) and classic novels automatically remind me of Pre-Victorian and Victorian era books of Austen, Dickens, Doyle, Thackeray, Bronte sisters, etc. For humor I turn to the Edwardian era writers like Saki and Wodehouse. And for that rare craving of plays it can't be anyone but Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde. And my aspiring wishlist - Orwell, Golding, Beckett. All British. All defining my idea of not just literature, books and writing but also of life and morality.
And through this all, I realized I have a generalized image of an "author" in my head. It's a "he" - white, middle aged, suited, surrounded by hard bound books... wait, I'm thinking of Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady (again, pygmalion, G B Shaw, British, eye roll). But that's pretty much it! You get my point.
Even though I've been out of that high school for two decades now, and read countless books by writers from all over the world, this conditioning is a little hard to get rid of. Which is why, I've abhorred Bukowski. I look for Dickensian poverty and Sherlock Holmes-ish alcoholism. Not the cheap alcohol drinking, cuss word spewing mess that was Bukowski. And I'll accept the cloaked, stylish sexism of the British easily. But when it comes to Bukowski referring to women by just their body parts and not giving them a moment's consideration when it is not for a quick lay, I'm enraged.
After much hesitation and a little prodding, I picked up my first Bukowski. Not his prose or poetry but a collection of his letters to various publishers, friends and other writers. In these letters, once I was able to look past the crass language, I saw something unexpected. I saw a blue collared worker drowning in abject poverty determined to not give up on his art. His struggles to fight the expected norms in poetry and writing, his response to scathing reviewers and critics, his passion and dedication to record the lives of the downtrodden - all so eye opening. His was the lonely voice of the lower class in a field dominated by wealth, connections and high class sensibilities. And for that alone, he deserves consideration.
"I think sometimes we can become too holy and therefore, caged", he says. And I can't help but agree with him. "Let us not censor ourselves out of reality from a goody-good stance" he writes, in response to the comments of a publisher of feminist press in 1972. "Just because a man is black does not mean he can't be a son of a bitch and just because a woman is a woman does not mean she can't be a bitch."
And then, in the same letter, he throws in a line that made me pause. "From what Alta quotes from my column I can see that she is so fiercely righteous that she misses the point of the whole thing - that I am poking fun at the male attitude towards the female". So, then, is Bukowski really a misogynist as he is framed to be? Is anything that simple and straight forward?
This book has put Bukowski on my radar. I'm curious to see what more he has to say. I'm curious to see how he says it. I'm curious enough to push the borders of my reading comfort zone.
And here's where I pause to think. The same library that gave me my love for books and reading is unfortunately also the same library that conditioned me to believe in the superiority of British writing. Until today, when talking about poetry and poets, I automatically tend to refer to the English poets from the Romantic era (Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, Keats, Byron...) and classic novels automatically remind me of Pre-Victorian and Victorian era books of Austen, Dickens, Doyle, Thackeray, Bronte sisters, etc. For humor I turn to the Edwardian era writers like Saki and Wodehouse. And for that rare craving of plays it can't be anyone but Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde. And my aspiring wishlist - Orwell, Golding, Beckett. All British. All defining my idea of not just literature, books and writing but also of life and morality.
And through this all, I realized I have a generalized image of an "author" in my head. It's a "he" - white, middle aged, suited, surrounded by hard bound books... wait, I'm thinking of Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady (again, pygmalion, G B Shaw, British, eye roll). But that's pretty much it! You get my point.
Even though I've been out of that high school for two decades now, and read countless books by writers from all over the world, this conditioning is a little hard to get rid of. Which is why, I've abhorred Bukowski. I look for Dickensian poverty and Sherlock Holmes-ish alcoholism. Not the cheap alcohol drinking, cuss word spewing mess that was Bukowski. And I'll accept the cloaked, stylish sexism of the British easily. But when it comes to Bukowski referring to women by just their body parts and not giving them a moment's consideration when it is not for a quick lay, I'm enraged.
After much hesitation and a little prodding, I picked up my first Bukowski. Not his prose or poetry but a collection of his letters to various publishers, friends and other writers. In these letters, once I was able to look past the crass language, I saw something unexpected. I saw a blue collared worker drowning in abject poverty determined to not give up on his art. His struggles to fight the expected norms in poetry and writing, his response to scathing reviewers and critics, his passion and dedication to record the lives of the downtrodden - all so eye opening. His was the lonely voice of the lower class in a field dominated by wealth, connections and high class sensibilities. And for that alone, he deserves consideration.
"I think sometimes we can become too holy and therefore, caged", he says. And I can't help but agree with him. "Let us not censor ourselves out of reality from a goody-good stance" he writes, in response to the comments of a publisher of feminist press in 1972. "Just because a man is black does not mean he can't be a son of a bitch and just because a woman is a woman does not mean she can't be a bitch."
And then, in the same letter, he throws in a line that made me pause. "From what Alta quotes from my column I can see that she is so fiercely righteous that she misses the point of the whole thing - that I am poking fun at the male attitude towards the female". So, then, is Bukowski really a misogynist as he is framed to be? Is anything that simple and straight forward?
This book has put Bukowski on my radar. I'm curious to see what more he has to say. I'm curious to see how he says it. I'm curious enough to push the borders of my reading comfort zone.