Women: A Novel by Charles Bukowski
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Book Reviews of Women: A Novel
Book Review: Bukowski at his best
Summary: 5 Stars
Great read. If you like Bukowski then you don't want to skip this book.Book Review: A Raucous Good Time
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review: A Review by Dr. Joseph Suglia
Summary: 4 Stars
The work of Charles Bukowski affirms the destruction of literature. I am not suggesting that the author is not a literary artist. I mean, rather, that he is actively committed to destroying all traces of literary language in his writing. He attempts to destroy the language of literature by presenting himself as he is, without disguise, subterfuge or literary artifice - a practice of writing that places his work at the furthest distance from the oeuvre of Kafka, Mallarmé and Blanchot. If one takes the author at his word, even in his writing, Bukowski is not a figure composed of paper and words but, rather, a real human being. This myth - one that Bukowski supported throughout his life - is the basis of the fascination surrounding his work and the reason for its cult status.
Generally speaking, people are attracted to books that lead them to the existence of the human being who created them. And in no other work does Bukowski seem to exhibit himself as purely as he does in "Women" (1978). Nothing else could account for the book's enduring appeal and seductiveness. Yes, it is true that the main character has a pseudonym, Henry Chinaski, and there is a publisher's note that says, "This novel is a work of fiction and no character is intended to portray any person or combination of persons living or dead." And yet there are seemingly no other masks or precautions. Throughout this work, Bukowski, apparently, shows himself as himself, revealing to the reader his self in all of its ugliness and misanthropy. "Women" would serve as an instance of the author's ecce homo, as a permutation of his self-manifestation.
It is no accident, from this perspective, that "Women" is almost completely devoid of novelistic qualities. What is remarkable about the work is the bluntness of its "style," its total reliance on ordinary language and the junk that is stockpiled in its every corner - that is, the superabundance of digressions, seemingly culled from the surfaces of everyday life. Because of its coarse and digressive character, "Women" doesn't read like a novel; instead, it resembles a raw document of an experience, a bloody chunk excised from the tissue of ordinary life. Perhaps this is the reason for the work's perpetual repetitiveness. Each scene of the "narrative" (if the book has one) follows exactly the same pattern: 1.) Chinaski meets a woman who is invariably significantly younger than him and who, in most cases, knows and admires his work. By having coitus with young women, Chinaski hopes to achieve victory over death, a kind of sexualized immortality. And perhaps this is also the reason why he writes ("My art is my fear"). (The women in the novel, in turn, are drawn to Chinaski partly because of his literary reputation and partly because of the way in which he describes women in his books. As a self-portrait, "Women" resembles nothing more than a literary personals advertisement - an authorial seduction tactic that is perhaps far more common than most would believe.) 2.) He has some form of sexual intercourse with the woman. Repeat. Intermittently, there are also poetry readings, noisy breakups, trips to a racetrack and laconic conversations with friends, acquaintances and strangers. Nothing extraordinary happens. Chinaski's account of his life is as uneventful and banal as most lives are thought to be. To the charge that his book is repetitive and tedious, the author could have always replied: "This is my body." A book that is repetitive and tedious may express a life that is repetitive and tedious; and if one accepts that the book documents an engagement with life, how could one fault the author for this? Like the Eucharist, the book would immediately communicate the body and blood of the author; his real presence would come forth purely from the pages. "Women's" material character as a book would disappear in order to show the life of the one who fabricated it. There would be a sacramental communication without communication between the author and reader.
Throughout the pages of "Women," the reader watches an endless parade of women move in and out of Chinaski's life. One bout of copulation is succeeded by another. Each of Chinaski's sexual encounters resembles a form of violent appropriation, the besmirching is what is sacred or the slaughtering or maiming of a wild beast ("one animal knifing another into submission"). It is not fortuitous that racetracks and boxing matches serve as the backdrop for much of the action in "Women," for sex, according to the logic of this book, is a sport - indeed, it is the bloodiest sport of all. A confrontation in which death itself is at stake.
A man who says, "All women are whores" or "All women are angels" usually generalizes his experience of one woman. Misogyny and philogyny are two sides of the same coin, to use a cliché. It is to Bukowski's credit that the women he describes are heterogeneous and non-interchangeable. They each have unique traits; each one is singular ("Every woman is different"). The names of the women are Lydia, Dee Dee, Nicole, Mindy, Laura (renamed "Katherine" by Chinaski), Joanna, Tammie, Mercedes, Cecelia, Liza, Gertrude and Hilda, Cassie, Debra, Sara, Tessie, Iris, Tanya, Valerie, and Valencia. We learn about their idiosyncrasies and their styles of speaking. And yet, for Chinaski, none of them are irreplaceable. Bukowski's protagonist swallows every woman he meets and vomits her back up. He then stalks and "murders" new prey. (Or is he the one who is stalked? In this text, it is never clear who is the seducer and who is the seduced.) Each woman belongs, theoretically, to a non-finite series. Some women reappear in Chinaski's life only to disappear again just as suddenly; later, they sometimes reappear again (this is particularly true of Lydia). The series ends with an interruption that comes by way of a renunciation: Chinaski refuses a young girl named Rochelle and feeds a cat a can of tuna fish. But the series could, theoretically, continue ad infinitum.
Although he defines himself as a writer, Chinaski prefers women to writing: " `You're good enough with the ladies,' Dee Dee said. `And you're a helluva writer.' [Chinaski replies:] `I'd rather be good with the ladies.'" He disdains what is called "literature"; in fact, all literary topics disgust him. Writing is, for him, merely a vicissitude of life; it is an addiction ("an insanity," he says at one point), but no more gripping than any of his other addictions - such as horse-betting, drinking and sex. Writing is indeed a compulsion, but only one compulsion among others. All of his compulsions are variations of the American wet dream. That dream, of course, is to acquire and to accumulate as much of a thing as possible. More money. More sex. More drinks. More of everything. Like everyone else, Chinaski is "sick on the dream" - the dream of gross acquisition and accumulation that defines American culture.
Chinaski is addicted to writing fiction in the way that an alcoholic is addicted to booze. But to what extent is his work fictive? " `I write fiction,' " he says at one point. " `You mean you lie?' asked Gertrude. `A little. Not too much.'" This statement is reminiscent of an ancient paradox: A man who comes from a city of liars claims that he is lying. Is he telling the truth? What is the status of Chinaski's statement? The first-person narrator of a work described as a "novel" claims that he lies a little, not too much, thus implying that what he writes is mostly true - this would apply, of course, to the narrative that he is composing in the literary present. How should one read the words of a character (himself a literary fabrication) in a literary fabrication who claims that his written narrative is mostly true? Should one regard it as a "fictive" statement? Of course, that would be the customary response. But what if one takes Chinaski at his word? What if one accepts Bukowski's premise that the protagonist does indeed represent the author?
Chinaski says during the conversation quoted above, "Fiction is an improvement on life." Perhaps it is not the case, then, that Bukowski expressed himself purely in his writing. And although it may be the case that writing is merely one compulsion among others for his protagonist, perhaps it was not so for Bukowski. Perhaps Bukowski did not write in order to live but, rather, lived in order to write. Perhaps he did not base his novels on his own life but, rather, modeled his life on the protagonists that he created. If this is so, the writing of Bukowski would indeed constitute the work of literature in the strongest sense of the word - that is, what is "composed of letters." For Bukowski, perhaps life was not the foundation of literature. Perhaps literature, rather, was the foundation of a shattered life. Literature as compensation, as evidence of an insufficiency: "People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way."
Joseph Suglia
Book Review: The Real Hank Moody
Summary: 4 Stars
On "Californication," the Showtime series based on Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski and the litany of experiences recounted in "Women," David Duchovny plays Hank Moody. Hank is an L.A. based writer with a daughter, a difficult relationship with the girl's mother, and an endless succession of affairs with admirers, colleagues, and friends, often fueled as a result of alcohol and/or drug binges. Hank Chinaski also has a daughter, a difficult relationship with the girl's mother, an endless succession of affairs, and a taste for drugs and booze. The difference between Chinaski and Moody lies in Showtime's careful manipulation. Duchovny has the resources to make Hank handsome, charming, witty, and sympathetic even in his most careless moments. He lives well, in a beautiful bungalow in Venice, and maintains a passionate love for his daughter's mother which the viewer expects will ultimately lead him to his salvation.
Bukowski's Hank has the wit, but the comparison pretty much ends there. He is ugly, lives in small and squalid apartments, and is not averse to misogyny. In the midst of an affair with a belly dancer from Vancouver, he asserts his fondness for "Canadian bacon." Some sex scenes bear closer to resemblance to rape scenes. There is never a moment of a pause in these scenarios, never a sense of wrongness.
Bukowski's character is revolting and, in his depictions of his pustule-ridden skin, the greasy floors of his apartment, and his unrepentant addiction to sex with any and every woman who crosses his path, he expects our disgust. Unlike other reviewers, I found Chinaski's steady access to so many women quite implausible. Halfway through, the catalogue began to bore me, and most of the women bore little identity beyond their body parts.
He approaches some for the first time and, within minutes, they are in bed. He has little time for seduction or courting and most of these women seem grateful for the opportunity to lie with a poet. His tastes are varied: streetwalkers, professionals living in the Hollywood Hills, dilettantes, unstable pill freaks, and numerous nubile admirers. Only a few women are truly memorable. The first is Lydia Vance, a sculptor and aspiring poet who inspires love and fear in Chinaski due to her passion and, often times, uncontrollable rage and jealousy. Vance is based on Bukowski's true life romance with sculptor and aspiring poet Linda King who later described her affair with Bukowski as a "prolonged nervous breakdown."
There is Tammy, a pillhead with bipolar tendencies. There is the remote Laura, whom Chinaski calls "Katharine" due to her resemblance to Katharine Hepburn. And there is Sara, the owner of an organic restaurant whose grace and dedication finally force Chinaski to question his behavior.
What saves this novel, which could easily be characterized as self-indulgent, misogynistic, hostile, and rather proud of itself for having these qualities, is its lucidity about the ways in which we distract ourselves in an effort to avoid wondering what meaning our lives bear. At one point, Chinaski confronts that his drinking, womanizing, and writing are simply activities to occupy his time while he waits to die.
Bukowski's style is straightforward, sometimes even brusque. His dialogue is a treat, giving a true sense of hearing how people communicate and, often, cross wires. There is some redundancy, which one might chalk up to poor editing or unawareness but that is, of course, not the case. Instead, this motif assists the tone of the novel, in which little changes and never is there a promise that the narrator has learned anything about himself or anyone else.
Bukowski avoids the flourishes of his contemporaries and mentions some by name in "Women," often contributing a taste for their novels to those within a certain class and of a temperament which are anathema to him.
I liked the novel because it is honest, though I detest many of the things it is honest about. I like it because it never pretends to be anything more than it is: an account of a man who finally has it good and intends to enjoy it, for he has nothing to lose except life itself.
Book Review: In his dreams.
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm not sure what to make of this book. It seems like one of those authors that's supposed to make you look "cool" if you read him.
I think I like it simply because it's really really easy to read... but the content was a little much most of the time. I mean, this guy goes around screwing all these different types of women in all these different types of situations and continues to do it while seemingly hooked up to an alcohol IV.
It's pretty unrealistic and quite sad... the book did seem to have somewhat of an arc where my interest started to pique with a certain relationship where "Henry" becomes somewhat more of a human being as opposed to a sex crazed drinking machine. But then he lost me towards the end and the buildup to the "resolution" was rushed and thoughtless. It seems as if he wrote without editing it, desperately searching for this tragic tale to end positively.
That being said, it was an easy read and pretty intriguing at times, despite the pulp subject matter. Some parts were rather funny, some parts were boring. I'm giving this 4 stars instead of 3 simply because I think I'll read another one of his novels... give the guy a chance.