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whogivesabook 's review for:
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town
by Charles Bukowski
I like the voice of Bukowski. What he’s saying isn’t always pleasant, but he had a clarity to his writing that is really readable. And humour too! I laughed out loud a few times.
This is a great collection. If you haven’t read any Bukowski, and I must admit I’m more familiar with his poetry myself, then this is a great place to start.
It runs from classic anecdote to bizarre fever-dream horror.
I think when Bukowski speaks of women, he is speaking of them in the same way you would a car or a fine bottle of wine. They’re lumped in amongst the finer things in life. But don’t let that confuse you into thinking he valued them. They are there to be used and consumed, just the same as the cars and the wine. For some reason he saw women as just another sort of poison. Like the drink. A fine activity that will land you in a bad place soon enough.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t indulge when I read these sorts of books. There is something of the anarchistic and the chaotic about them. There’s a nightmarish freedom, like the brakes failing on a motorway, to the whole experience.
You know, we know, the world knows, god knows, the birds know... heck, even the stones know that none of that shit he got up to was aligned with the divine. And it sure as hell doesn’t deserve any glorification or re-enactment. His work is an outpouring of the digestive tract. But everyone makes, man. Everyone makes. Not one of us can claim to be an angel either. That’s best left to beings without sexual organs. We all have it in us. That nasty side. Its best to accept it and tame it down. Domesticate.
Bukowski is just Bukowski. Something went missing in him. And maybe he never knew, or maybe he knew but never wanted to find it again. Bukowski wrote some really raw stuff and the world needs that. For the same reason it needs its horror movies and rock music. Its holy catharsis.
This is a great collection. If you haven’t read any Bukowski, and I must admit I’m more familiar with his poetry myself, then this is a great place to start.
It runs from classic anecdote to bizarre fever-dream horror.
I think when Bukowski speaks of women, he is speaking of them in the same way you would a car or a fine bottle of wine. They’re lumped in amongst the finer things in life. But don’t let that confuse you into thinking he valued them. They are there to be used and consumed, just the same as the cars and the wine. For some reason he saw women as just another sort of poison. Like the drink. A fine activity that will land you in a bad place soon enough.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t indulge when I read these sorts of books. There is something of the anarchistic and the chaotic about them. There’s a nightmarish freedom, like the brakes failing on a motorway, to the whole experience.
You know, we know, the world knows, god knows, the birds know... heck, even the stones know that none of that shit he got up to was aligned with the divine. And it sure as hell doesn’t deserve any glorification or re-enactment. His work is an outpouring of the digestive tract. But everyone makes, man. Everyone makes. Not one of us can claim to be an angel either. That’s best left to beings without sexual organs. We all have it in us. That nasty side. Its best to accept it and tame it down. Domesticate.
Bukowski is just Bukowski. Something went missing in him. And maybe he never knew, or maybe he knew but never wanted to find it again. Bukowski wrote some really raw stuff and the world needs that. For the same reason it needs its horror movies and rock music. Its holy catharsis.