/lit/ - Literature

As long as you don't enjoy him too much, people round here don't like to see him praised.

Depends.

OP here, I'm interested in him due to a Modest Mouse song, which one of his novels should I read?

>>768389

Googled the lyrics. Go for his poetry.

http://www.charlesbukowski.20m.com/bukowski_poems.html

>>768398
OP here, is this really his shit?
I though he would be deep. This is entertaining though.

Remember he was a drunkard who lived in the slums

Read Factotum, then if you want more, Post Office, Ham on Rye, Women, they're all fine.

>>768379
lulz i found sum child porn featuren christopeher pooolar bear hearways :tinyurl dawt com / 39poqjq d9b3eb116567032df97b8da26c2359f5

I think he was a pioneer as far as MySpace poetry is concerned.

>>768435
HAAAAAH!

>which one of his novels should I read?
Ham on Rye

bukowski sucks, only reason to read any of his stuff is so you know how hard to punch someone when they say they love his work

>>768377

lulz i found sum child porn featuren christopeher pooolar bear hearways :tinyurl dawt com / 39poqjq 0e2feb0b7e4e25066ba16b73ccd67bd8

He's just a dirty old man who writes about his dirty life: drinking and fucking fat chicks and writing.

And one detective novel.

Fun reads (and sometimes depressing or touching), but don't expect anything super deep.

ham on rye > post office > factotum

>>768381
I lulled hard at OPs pic. Niccceee.

>>769280
post office is obviously his best novel.

There are better books to read.

>>768405
Ugh Factotum is terrible and a terrible introduction to his work. It's boring and monotonous with no real plot, storyline, or other redeeming quality. Go with Ham on Rye or Postoffice.

I only read Post office and Women. They are basically interchangeable, but I liked them both. It's probably not high culture or whatever, but they were an easy read to pass idle time.

Bukowski is just awesome; especially his short stories - also Post Office and Women.
A lot of people claim he is not serious literature, but those are mostly pretentious-fags who namedrop and talk about Chomsky as if he were their God - and love Joyce even though they've only read Ulysses halfway through.

>>769418


pffff... morel like halfway through the first page...

why does everyone thing Ham on Rye is his best work? It's just another fucking story about a little shit kid with shitty parents that fights and masturbates and finds out about dicks and booze. So what? That's a story we've all heard a thousand times. Post Office is his best work hands down.

bukowski is pretty much everything a writer should be, now I expect the casual shitstorm for stating this but you know its true. It's literature deprived from everything pretentious. Bukowski takes a shit on the american dream, that's why Iike him.

>>769499

Not all literature can be what you want it to be. Not all literature can be one thing.

>>768381
" it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit there on the roof
still playing
and I'd tell my woman,
"Ah, what a marvelous radio!"
the next morning I'd take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit there on the roof
still playing-
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I'd take the window
back to the glass man.
I don't remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played. "

--A Radio With Guts, Bukowski.

Does this read almost exactly like prose to anybody else? I mean, breaking up the lines might make you focus on an individual phrase a bit more than you normally would but he doesn't do it to great effect.

>>769480
examples of said story?

>>769513
agree'd. So i guess I'll rephrase: It is the kind I'm into this time of my life

>>769518
When he reads them they're just like prose too

>>768400
>implying "deep" poetry doesn't depend entirely upon the reader.

>>769692

it doesn't

>the class begins again.
>it is discovered that I am
>the only one to have gotten
>100 percent on the test.

>I slouch back in my chair
>with my dark shades on.
>I am the class
>intellectual.

Fuck, this redeemed everything else on that poetry page.