Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski

It's been a few weeks since I've posted a review mostly because I have quite a bit of writing to do for Uni at the minute - namely my dissertation and a 90 page script, so taking time to read novels makes me feel pretty guilty when I have a stack of film essays to go though. Never the less...

I love Bukowski, I really do, I first started reading his work last Summer when I was flat out broke and had no money for books - I went to my local library (really local - about a 2 minutes walk), which doesn't hold the best collection but there are some gems, one of which was The Most Beautiful Woman In Town which I read in about a day and adored. I had heard of Bukowski before but had only read his poetry, and after reading one collection of short stories I was really interested in more of his novels. I think I lent a few more from libraries over that Summer but I'm not sure which they were - never the less they steered me onto buying my own copies - one of which was Ham On Rye.

“It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.”

Ham On Rye is the story of Bukowski's mostly autobiographical alter ego Henry Chinaski as he goes through childhood and his teenage years and If you don't like his other novels you're not going to like this one. I was really interested to read this book because I always wonder how Bukowski became the man he was, and how he formed himself into such a person and this book did answer those questions that I had but with the answer; He was just like that. As I said the book is mostly autobiographical  but with some people who write autobiographies they write with a certain message in mind, either sadness or a comedic factor etc. They highlight and emphasise the parts of their past which fit in with who they are now - because that's why we're reading the book - to find out more about them. We don't want to read things that are pointless or have nothing to do with anything that impacted the persons life, and although I think Bukowski does do this here - highlights and shows us parts of his past which have stuck with him - which he believes has shaped him, there are some parts which don't connect to the rest of the "story", but I enjoy them just the same.

“Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe if you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become so obvious yourself.” 

I think I would probably just enjoy anything the man has written, he seems to be a very "Marmite" kind of writer (If you don't know what Marmite is it's a kind of yeast extract spread for toast and sandwiches and in the UK the tagline of the product is "You either love it or you hate it".) Some people don't have much time for his writing at all - which is understandable I suppose, it would be very easy to just label Bukowski a drunk and discount his work but He has grown to be one of my very favourite writers over the past year and I for one just can't get enough.

“I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, "crazy." But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.” 

With Ham On Rye I found myself sympathising with young Hank Chinaski many times over. His story isn't the happiest but he doesn't dwell on the unhappy times or ask the audience to pity him. He's very much a normal man, and was a normal boy. Throughout the book Hank does nothing extra-ordinary, he goes through no great romance or any glittering opportunities - he just lives his life and lets us see into it a little bit. A great read packed with great writing, If you like Bukowski and haven't read this, then definitely do so. If you've not read his work before then maybe start with Ham On Rye - then you could read "Hank's" life chronologically, and what a treat that would be!

“Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought.” 

Happy Halloween everyone -  Is anyone dressing up? What as? I hope you are all wonderfully ill on your poison of choice - be it sweets or alcohol. I'll be indulging in a happy mix of the two!

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Favourite Authors In X Genre (Ex- Top Ten Favourite Science Fiction Authors, Top Ten Fave Contemporary YA authors)

Another Tuesday means it's time for me to not be able to fulfil this weeks prompt! This time because ..I never know what genre I'm reading! (I am clearly terrible.) I think I'm going to do Love, so without further ado;  

My Top Ten Favourite Love Story Authors

1) Chuck Palahniuk - For writing love and romance without Hollywood sickliness an adding a dose of realism into his couples. "If you love something set it free, but don't be surprised if it comes back with herpes."

2) Charles Bukowski - He may be a "Dirty Old Man" but I just love the way he writes women and his obsession with chasing them "I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, “I’m going to pee..”’ hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together"

3) Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights is the greatest love story ever. (In my opinion!) "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable."

4) Anaïs Nin - Her prose is so dreamy and beautiful, when I read Nin's stories it's always like wading out to sea, her work is utterly captivating. "How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself. "

5) Henry Miller - I adore the hopeless way he writes women, he's jaded but in a way that really works in the stories he tells. "There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart."

6) Lionel Shriver - For We Need To Talk About Kevin, which I find beautiful and captivating in terms of the romantic love story in main protagonists relationship with her husband, but also the issues she faces with familial love in her children. "I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But what kind of love is that?"

7) Vladimir Nabokov - Because anyone who can make me forget that the relationship I'm reading about is that of a paedophile and a young girl is worthy of this list. "There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey"

8) Jane Austen - Who doesn't love period romance? "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

9) Cormac McCarthy - He writes beautiful stories about familial love - The Road being a fantastic example. "Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you."

10) George R.R. Martin - For Jon and Ygritte. "There's been no one," he confessed. "Only you."

(P.S. Does anyone watch Downton Abbey? If so I feel we need a discussion group of some sorts because this week KILLED ME!)

October 4th - National Poetry Day 2012

Today is national poetry day! To celebrate I thought I'd post my favourite poem. I um'd and ah'd about what to pick because I have (as many of you may have guessed!) multiple favourites of pretty much everything, but this particular poem has always really struck me.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pour whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's

in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

- Charles Bukowski

What are your favourite poems?

 

Book Haul

So I was looking to buy some new books the other day, (and by new I mean second hand!) I usually only buy new books for gifts or I'm really anticipating an upcoming release. I was planning to buy on Amazon as that's where I've been shopping recently, but when I looked at prices I thought I'd go over to Play as I always used to use Play Trade to buy books and the prices were great. Turns out everything I was planning to buy was cheaper on Play, so I picked up the following;

Underworld - Don Delillo 
I have been meaning to buy titles from this author for so long! Underworld really struck me as a great first novel to try out. Amazon says "Opens at the Shea Stadium at the World Series Game of 1951, where the ball is caught by a young, black man in the crowd, and continues to change hands throughout the book. The various recipients of the ball tell the story of post-war US history giving a panorama of America from the 50s to the 90s."

The Waves - Virginia Woolf 

I've been hearing a lot about Virginia Woolf recently and so many people recommend her work, I'm really excited to read her work. I picked up two novels to start with as they both captured my attention; I'm a sucker for the sea. Amazon Says "Widely regarded as one of her greatest and most original works, it conveys the rhythms of life in synchrony with the cycle of nature and the passage of time. Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The subsequent continuity of these six main characters, as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions, is interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature."

To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf 
"This simple and haunting story captures the transcience of life and its surrounding emotions. To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War."

Miss Wyoming - Douglas Coupland 

I love Coupland's books, I have quite a few already, but Miss Wyoming has been on my "To Buy" list for a while so I thought it was about time I picked it up! Amazon says "Susan and John need to disappear – Susan and John need to find each other. Meet Susan Colgate – Miss Wyoming. Winner of a hundred teen pageants, child TV soap star, owner of a hideously pushy mother… and now reduced to small, brainless parts in small, brainless movies. Oh, and sole survivor of Flight 802. If she were to walk away from the wreckage now, before the emergency crews get here, she could disappear and nobody would ever know…

Meet John Johnson – action film producer (Bel Air P.I… um, Bel Air P.I. 2), occasional sado-masochist, junkie. He just died – but only for 5 minutes. But while he was gone, he saw a vision of a woman’s face and realized that it was time to escape, to ditch the baggage of being horny, rich, lonely John Johnson and to lose himself. To disappear.

Wouldn’t it be nice if they were to find themselves and get together?"

Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski
I'm a huge Bukowski fan but I don't actually own any of his work! I first got into his books last summer, when surprisingly, I found quite a large stock of them in my local library. It's only a 2 minute walk away so I never felt the need to buy books I could borrow for free, (though secretly, I do want to own most!) I hadn't read Ham On Rye though and it's about young Bukowski - so who could resist!? Amazon says ""Ham on Rye" follows the path of Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski through the high school years of acne and rejection and into the beginning of a long and successful career in alcoholism. The novel begins against the backdrop of an America devastated by the Depression and takes the Chinaski legend up to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Arguably Bukowski's finest novel."

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

I saw the film adaptation of this novel years ago and never thought that much of it, (apart from the soundtrack!) but I wtched it again recently and it seemed like one of those adaptations that doesn't do justice to the book, so I thought I'd give it a try. Amazon says "The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear."

The 6 books in total cost me just over £14, with free delivery which is such great value! Where are your favourite places to buy?