(98) Bukowski

Since the books we read are an important part of the psychogeography of place we try to keep POWcityblog in mind when perusing the shelves. Of late, we found ourselves with a copy of Women by Charles Bukowski. Pornographic, romantic, engaging and repelling we found it unique, poetic. Indeed, booze-hound Henry Chinaski puts many a main character to shame (especially that wanker Holden Caulfield). While we question the relevance of many intrusions into the canon dating from the 1960s we have to say we laud Women. Sure, Bukowski was channelling a 1940s kind of dissipation (i.e. Barfly) and the problem residents of Poorkdale are more complicated, and yet more boring, in their moral dilapidation than Bukowski’s 1968 LA. Nonetheless, we found the reading of one aids and abets the understanding of the other. Women objectifies women, yes, but the compelling, wonderful portraits Bukowski comes up with makes it a redeeming, sacred kind of objectification, one that lends grace to an obscure, lonely alcoholic who worked too long for the postal service and finds himself, at the broken down age of sixty, suddenly famous. We should have such problems.

RIP: David Foster Wallace