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Post by Jam Jar on Apr 12, 2018 1:38:55 GMT
Anyone read him?
I bought Post Office but I don't know if I can be bothered reading it.
He sounds like the hipster's wet dream. I bet he's shit, isn't he?
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Post by Colin Sibthorpe on Apr 15, 2018 0:57:42 GMT
He probably is shit, yes.
I'm glad to have read Kerouac but only so I can say I have. I got no pleasure from it at all.
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Post by Jam Jar on Apr 19, 2018 16:23:29 GMT
I'm giving it a go. So far I'm not impressed. He just keeps talking about how he's always hungover and how Betty's got a big ass.
This really is exactly what I think of when I think of Hipster bullshit. Picture a Guardian reader with a designer beard, skinny jeans, a non-fat latte in hand and all the correct SJW politics to go with it -- that guy loves this shit.
I'll persevere though.
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Post by Jam Jar on Apr 27, 2018 17:30:15 GMT
Okay, I may have spoke too soon.
I'm nearly finished and despite taking a long time to get into it (part one being a bit dry and mundane)... I actually really like it.
It's earthy, day-to-day to shit. Though I could do with less of the... "I was hungover... she had a nice fat ass"... stuff.
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Post by cryptoflovecraft on Apr 30, 2018 13:30:24 GMT
Never read Post Office but I loved Notes of a Dirty Old Man and War All The Time.
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Post by Jam Jar on Apr 30, 2018 18:47:35 GMT
I actually liked it a lot. Loved the final sentence.
Maybe hipsters are on to something.
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Post by yggdrasil on May 5, 2018 9:41:20 GMT
Read most of them but they do become rather repetitive. Have you seen the movie "Barfly" where mickey Rourke plays a fictionalised Bukowski ?
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Post by Jam Jar on Nov 16, 2018 18:28:13 GMT
Okay, well it's official. I fucking love Bukowski.
I just finished Ham on Rye and loved the simplicity of the writing, the brevity of the chapters, the honesty of the prose. He might actually be my favourite writer now. For years I'd avoided him because whenever I was on OKCupid, I'd read all these profiles by women who were guardian-reading lefties of the most tediously predicable type and they all seemed to say their favourite writer was Bukowski. Based on this, I concluded that he must be some kind of liberal twat who wrote pretentious stream of consciousness twattery about how 'zibbedy bip-bop' the sunset was (that turned out to be Will Self). So I was surprises to find he's got a reputation for being a misanthropic misogynist.
To be fair, this was over five years ago when even Guardian readers weren't that hysterical about waycism and miswogyny. I suspect the modern Guardian reader finds Bukowski very problematic.
Anyway, I'm off to read Factotum (well, I will eventually).
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Post by Jam Jar on Feb 3, 2019 21:16:32 GMT
Finished Factotum. More of the same but again, I enjoyed it.
I think it's because I believe Chinaski is a real person. I don't just mean he's Bukowski, I mean he feels like a person actually living a life. I worked a few pointless factory jobs in my time and there's something both sad and romantic about the fact that what Bukowski was doing, I was doing decades later. Nothing really changes.
I read other books and the prose is so much better, has wonderful turns of phrase and fluid lyrical similes and metaphors but... but I don't believe any of it. It's just so literary and false, not real.
I'll probably read 'Women' next.
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Post by cryptoflovecraft on Feb 6, 2019 16:16:47 GMT
Finished Factotum. More of the same but again, I enjoyed it. I think it's because I believe Chinaski is a real person. I don't just mean he's Bukowski, I mean he feels like a person actually living a life. I worked a few pointless factory jobs in my time and there's something both sad and romantic about the fact that what Bukowski was doing, I was doing decades later. Nothing really changes. I read other books and the prose is so much better, has wonderful turns of phrase and fluid lyrical similes and metaphors but... but I don't believe any of it. It's just so literary and false, not real. I'll probably read 'Women' next. If you like Bukowski's prose, you'd probably enjoy Louis Ferdinand Celine's works esp. Journey To the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan. Celine was a huge influence on Bukowski and on the Beat authors (Kerouac, etc) .
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Post by Jam Jar on Feb 7, 2019 20:25:28 GMT
Finished Factotum. More of the same but again, I enjoyed it. I think it's because I believe Chinaski is a real person. I don't just mean he's Bukowski, I mean he feels like a person actually living a life. I worked a few pointless factory jobs in my time and there's something both sad and romantic about the fact that what Bukowski was doing, I was doing decades later. Nothing really changes. I read other books and the prose is so much better, has wonderful turns of phrase and fluid lyrical similes and metaphors but... but I don't believe any of it. It's just so literary and false, not real. I'll probably read 'Women' next. If you like Bukowski's prose, you'd probably enjoy Louis Ferdinand Celine's works esp. Journey To the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan. Celine was a huge influence on Bukowski and on the Beat authors (Kerouac, etc) . Thanks. I will investigate Celine. Though it should be said, I've struggled with beat authors (and wouldn't class Bukowski as one). I found On The Road essentially unreadable. A quick look at Wikipedia reveals this: This just makes him more appealing as far as I'm concerned. Wrong think makes for great writing.
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