Charles Bukowski: Booze & broads, baby

I'm probably going to lose any shreds of feminist street cred I might have aqcuired from recent posts but I suppose my feelings regading the following are best summed up by Rhett Butler.

Charles Bukowski was an American poet and author who I can very much appreciate because he really was the drunken, whoreing, gambling scumbag he portrayed in his novels and poems. He didn't just write about a 'concept' or something he thought might be a good idea to maintain an image - he was real, and finding people like that is a rarity indeed. If there's one thing I think the world is lacking in, it's intelligent scumbags and/or misanthropes. For it is these people who I believe make some of the best art; the degenerates, the morally corrupt, the shunnerers of society...and in some cases the woman-beating alcoholic who wore his heart on his sleeve.

It's hard for me to call the man a misogynist because on one hand yes, he did have a nasty temper and let it out on whoever was nearest but I don't quite think that necessarily made him a hater of women. In fact I think the opposite, the man fell too much in love too quickly with what some might consider to be less than savoury women, so I have no doubt his perception would have been fairly corrupted.

I'm going out on a limb here to say that despite his apparent track record of beating women, I don't think he was some kind of domineering male with control issues over women. I think he lashed out at anyone, any gender, who happened to bother him at the time and he didn't subscribe to the notion that women are supposed to be placed on a golden pedastool simply because they're the gentler sex. In Bukowski's eyes they (women) were just part of the group we otherwise refer to as 'beings' - in most cases as scummy as he, if not worse.

I think it's too easy for people to get caught up in his descriptions of various sexual encounters such as 'mounting whatever hole may have made its way into his piss-stained bed'. In this instance I really don't think he is saying "women are just holes to be mounted", I think he's just giving insight into the mind of a broken soul who saw things very differently to how one is "supposed" to. Yes, he may have been a twit at times but he was one who was so emotionally crippled by his sensitivity that those tender moments he describes so beautifully are overlooked, people instead revert to focusing on his contemptuous behavior and completely ignore the very delicate and oftentimes vulnerable side of him.

The excellent move, "Barfly" is a great depiction of Bukowski's existence - Mickey Rourke did a fantastic job of speaking like Bukowski too. In terms of his work, aside from some very nihilistic poems, my favourite is his most outstanding book, "Post Office".

Honest. Courageous. Intense. Here's to you birthday boy, you beautiful bastard.