Without bringing much attention to my 6 month absence from this page, I’m going to resume these ratings as if that never happened. Alright? Good. Now we can get back to what brought all (my guess is two, including myself and my mom) of you here: more of my thoughts on books nobody actually wants to let me lend them.
I’m not sure whether it’s my pre-graduating-college existential dread, the stress from my impending annual creative critique meltdown, or if something about the state of this pandemic made my brain say, “yeah, it’s time to make it even more dreadful”, but I’ve started reading poetry again.
Let it be known, I really tried not to be this person. I genuinely tried to get interested in the classics, the feminist icons (Simone de Beauvoir; thank you, but no thank you), even the young adult cheese novels, but I kept circling back to my favorite drunk poet at the end of every day. I could ramble on about his own ramblings for hours, but I’ll specify it a little bit and stick to Love is a Dog from Hell, by Charles Bukowski for now.
I --- have a lot of feelings about his work, most of them conflicted. Most people either love him or hate him, but I genuinely can’t decide where I fall. I know that as a female writer (using that term loosely here) myself, I should find Bukowski to be abrasive, disgusting, maybe even a little misogynistic? But personally, I find him to be almost comical.
Looking at it from a completely objective standpoint, him talking about getting old, getting fat, and still getting women makes me seriously question the idea behind anyone’s “prime” . It puts my mind to ease on there being any sort of biological clock at work behind the scenes. Instead of seeing him as disgusting in these instances, I find it relatively funny how brutally honest he is about his downfalls as a man. While that’s absolutely not the point of anything he’s actually written, it's the lens I have to read it through to keep me from getting angry at the objectifications he sprinkled nearly every page with.
Written through the late 1970s, Love is a Dog from Hell is an account of love, the failures of such, and the resulting losses - from the direct point of view of , “drunk, jaded, asshole,” Bukowski. Most of the collection alludes to this mysterious redheaded woman from Texas that (presumably) he regrets losing, and everything that follows feels very reactionary to those feelings. Outside of the mentions of this relationship, the pieces are drunk, crass, and make you feel like you’re spiraling out of control right there with him. It's easy to see that he’s replacing his need for love with lust, drugs, and alcohol, but sad to read as it becomes, not surprisingly, the root of his perpetuated loneliness. His writing is gritty, honest, and at times questionable, but it flows so smooth that I forgive that. I think the best part of reading Bukowski is that sometimes you relate, sometimes you hate, but that’s exactly what he intended. When you need it, his writing is hilarious, relatable, and comforting, telling you that it's other people who suck, life is hard to us all, you can’t blame yourself, etc. When you need to move on, what you've read and laughed at before is suddenly dark, bitter, and ugly. It shows you that getting drunk, getting existential, and treating others poorly maybe isn’t the greatest way of solving your problems.
Out of pure respect to feminism, I’ll rate this a six. Then again, maybe a 7 - with bonus points given for many times I actually laughed out loud and tried to make someone else read the line to gauge their reaction. If you don’t take it too seriously and see Bukowski for what he is (sad and troubled but one hell of a storyteller) there are some beautiful and funny phrases to cling onto.
If you’re looking for a book with a little bit of edge, that will make people who see you reading it stop and think, “wow, they must be really cool and artsy and definitely know how to smoke a cigarette,” I think this is a fantastic pick. It's very, “sit in a coffee shop pretending to read while really just waiting for someone to approach you and ask what it's about,”-esque.
Final Rating: 6.5/10
If you happen to be reading this as a result of my portfolio critique stream, I'll leave you with one final note. To quote from my favorite piece, This Poet, “He’ll vomit anywhere for money,” this can be considered my formal job status until further notice.
Comments