 "excellent" | 2009-08-07 |
| - Reviewed By User: A93CRNUJJXQ8F |
| This is the second book I read by Charles Bukowski, he is easily my favorite writer. His words are raw and genius without being pretentoius. An amazing read, you feel his childhood you will be in awe at his emergence of brilliance under horrid circumstances. |
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 "A very good but not great writer" | 2009-05-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3GQ6F7SLD0L7C |
Bukowski comes clean on some things in this book, perhaps because, dropping back to childhood years, he couldn't help himself. Some things must have just bubbled up despite his outsider persona (more on this below). In this one we not only learn about his awful father and miserable upbringing, but about some of his early influences, as well as some writers and writing styles he recoiled from. He's more human in Ham on Rye.
Bukowski hates pretense. It's what makes him fascinating, and laudable. He hates it with the passion of a Celine, another misanthrope who knew how to write. And yet in this book, with its smattering of vulnerable details, we get a hint that in other books, tough guy Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's alter ego, is not an entirely pretense-free construct. Which is too bad, because the scant criticism Bukowski gets (he has mostly fans, few detractors)--that there's no uplift, no redemption, in his writing--probably derives from this missing slice of his life.
And of course it should be said that Bukowski can be nasty. His takedown of Henry Miller in another book, for instance--a transparent aka for the then old man, living in Pacific Palisades, supposedly trying to cadge money from his younger visitor--gave me the creeps. Why savage your precursors?
Back to Ham on Rye: somewhere along the way I realized I was reading this novel/memoir as if it were a noir mystery--a Jim Thompson, say--which is a genre I like, but whose limitations I understand. And I realized too that I'd lowered my expectations, to accept Bukowsky for what he is: a very good writer, but not a great one. Hence the four stars.I Think, Therefore Who Am I? |
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| "Bukowski: A Very Good but Not Great Writer" | 2009-05-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3GQ6F7SLD0L7C |
Bukowski comes clean on some things in this book, perhaps because, dropping back to childhood years, he couldn't help himself. Some things must have just bubbled up despite his outsider persona (more on this below). In this one we not only learn about his awful father and miserable upbringing, but about some of his early influences, as well as some writers and writing styles he recoiled from. He's more human in Ham on Rye.
Bukowski hates pretense. It's what makes him fascinating, and laudable. He hates it with the passion of a Celine, another misanthrope who knew how to write. And yet in this book, with its smattering of vulnerable details, we get a hint that in other books, tough guy Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's alter ego, is not an entirely pretense-free construct. Which is too bad, because the scant criticism Bukowski gets (he has mostly fans, few detractors)--that there's no uplift in his writing, no redemption--probably derives from this missing slice of his life.
And of course it should be said that Bukowski can be nasty. His takedown of Henry Miller in another book, for instance--whom he presents as an old man, living in Pacific Palisades, supposedly trying to cadge money from his younger visitor (a transparent aka)--gave me the creeps. Why savage your precursor?
Back to Ham on Rye: somewhere along the way I realized I was reading this novel/memoir as if it were a noir mystery--a Jim Thompson, say--which is a genre I like, but whose limitations I understand. And I realized too that I'd lowered my expectations, to accept Bukowski for what he is: a very good writer, but not a great one.I Think, Therefore Who Am I? |
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| "Portrait of The Artist - Bukowski Style" | 2009-04-15 |
| - Reviewed By bccrab |
As another reviewer pointed out below , Ham On Rye falls into the tradition of self-revelatory novels in which an author recounts their early developmental years. Bukowski sets Ham On Rye in Los Angeles during the depression and his settings and characters are poignantly realized. These are people you feel you've met.
The narrator/protagonist Henry Chinaski suffers through isolation in his early childhood, adolescence and young adulthood and he gradually grows to accept and embrace his isolation in some unexpected ways. Bukowski is brilliant when it comes to portraying the cruelty of adolescents toward those who don't quite fit in. Henry , always the outsider, has some moments of social acceptance and budding friendships but they never seem to develop. The real turn here is that while Henry struggles to understand his world the reader is gradually drawn into a sympathetic view of this guy.
Bukowski can be crude but ultimately this was a very engaging read for me, and I will certainly pick up his other novels as a result of having read this. |
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| "". . . no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left."" | 2009-03-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3IMMRZ9OLD17V |
Defending Charles Bukowski's rebellion against societal norms is a lost cause, and his abuse of alcohol, women, himself, and humanity in general have often gotten him slagged as a misogynistic wino with no karma left to burn. As a fictional memoir that covers the overlapping lives of Bukowski and anti-protagonist Hank Chinaski, Ham On Rye serves as a tome of both explanation and unorganized insurrection towards his detractors and, oddly enough, his own followers.
Most likely a play on Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Bukowski's Chinaski goes through the same qualms as Salinger's Caulfield: hostility through sexuality (and vice-versa), a slap in the face of a torn nation (Bukowski and The Great Depression, Salinger and WWII), and alienation as a way of life. However, Salinger's (perhaps lack of) emphasis on personal growth is turned into Bukowski's emphasis on ignoring the reasons he/Chinaski grew up tough, mean, and odd. This could have easily ended up a stale story of a broken home and a broken country paralleling and splitting the life of what would become a broken boy, but Bukowski focuses on the scenes and people he was surrounded with. Were he real, Chinaski himself would probably ponder the effects of the distress around him, but in the end he would have concluded that he didn't care, and cracked another beer.
Plus, Chinaski's just a bigger bada** than Caulfield. Amidst the sad and awkward climb into adulthood, Chinaski encountered numerous situations where he bit down hard and threw a punch, whether or not he was going to win. He has rhino balls and elephant skin.
The book may be a quick read, but it's anything but a light read. Bukowski manages to be smart without being academic, offensive without being alienating, and able to write in a way that somehow lacks both the fluff and the stilted language/situations of minimalistic prose. His style has always taken a backseat to his tales, giving (good) directions, but never a reason to pick up a book and turn the pages. However, with Ham On Rye Bukowski is able to turn a well-lived life into a well-written story. Between this and his collections of letters, the world could someday understand Bukowski and world as he saw it, laughing from the barstool near the corned, feeling so badly the p***ing and s****ing glory of humanity. |
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| "Good Old Buk'" | 2009-03-16 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1344QGIXV3C3I |
Bukowski is as graphic as ever in his way of life.
I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone.
He has shown the world how it really is without hiding behind huge metaphors which a lot of writers persist in doing. |
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