Bukowski

I think that the most hilarious story I ever read was one in which Charles Bukowski explained that he wanted to call the police on his neighbours. Why? Because they left the house to go to work each morning at 8am and they returned at 6pm. At 9:30pm their lights would go out and they would all go to sleep, only to repeat the process the following day. For this behaviour, Bukowski wanted to call the police. He was the first to acknowledge, however, that his call would fall upon deaf ears as he did not have much of a case. Never the less, the story tells us so much about his unique mind and his original outlook on life. He considered it unacceptable, nothing short of a crime, to spend life behaving in a conventional manner. Conventional thought and behaviour was something that Bukowski would not tolerate and he spent his entire life writing prose and poems about this very thing. It wasn’t so much that he had to point it out or specifically mention it, unconventional thoughts simply oozed from his writings and left any conscientious reader with a smile upon their face.

                To understand and enjoy Bukowski it is necessary to have a dark sense of humour and to love the unexpected, the offensive, and the ‘socially unacceptable’. So much of what is said in the public domain adheres to a strict code of political correctness and socially acceptable behaviour and that is just pure drivel… utterly boring and unoriginal rubbish. This is because society wants to read ‘my husband/wife and I are so incredibly happy’ rather than ‘my husband/wife is fucking someone else and I’m actually happy about it because it means I can finally escape.’ The truth is treated like some form of social disease because the only thing acceptable to read is positivity… even though it is usually complete crap and is not worth the paper and or electricity used to write it. Thousands of animals can be tortured and abused but all people will write about is their snooty breakfast at some over -priced restaurant in some fake, plastic part of the world were the only important thing in life is trying to look twenty one for the rest of one’s life.

                Charles Bukowski had an intense hatred for Mickey Mouse and what this ‘asshole, three-fingered idiot’ symbolised. Bukowski’s role was the de-Disneyfication of the world and he made a very good attempt at this. However, he’d be weeping into his beer if he could see modern society. It’s Las Vegas and Los Angeles uber alles. But not Bukowski’s Los Angeles… this is not what the people are interested in; they are interested in Rodeo Drive and Malibu beach. They are interested in the Casinos and shows of Las Vegas. Mickey Mouse. Plastic. Empty. Shallow. Anything but thought and compassion and individuality. If it is not Los Angeles and Las Vegas then it is Dubai, the multi-billion dollar monstrosity built in the desert were everything is completely void of culture, history, feeling, hope and humility.

                Any person of humility, who is genuine and compassionate, will love Bukowski for precisely that; he was a genuine man of integrity, he was a man seemingly incapable of dishonesty. He did what he felt was true and right, he had no interesting in becoming rich and had no interest in anything that he felt was pretentious. Even so, he would give almost anyone the benefit of the doubt before writing them off if they turned out to be fake, insincere, cruel, greedy, selfish, rude, boastful, etc.