Transcription
Hey everyone, thank you for watching this video. These 11 lessons will give you a greater understanding of the German-American author Charles Bukowski, his novels, his writing style, but most importantly his philosophy on life.
I have to be honest, until a few months ago, I had no idea who Bukowski was. Someone mentioned one of his novels, *Post Office*, to me and I read it. Then I read all six of his novels, as well as his letters. I couldn't stop myself from devouring his writing. So this video is a distilled version of my reading of his books and letters.
First, let me tell you a few things about Charles Bukowski. He was an outsider, almost an outcast, partly because of his physical and cultural differences, but partly because of his anti-social personality. One can say that his isolation or withdrawal from groups and society in general was caused by others refusing to accept him, but also by his own refusal to join others.
Bukowski was born in 1920 to an American father and a German mother. Growing up was a huge struggle; he was abused at home and bullied at school. What do you do when nobody likes you? Bukowski took refuge in alcohol. In fact, in his early teenage years, he discovered alcohol and it stayed with him throughout his life. But most crucially, around the same time, he also found literature or fiction to counter-balance his alcoholic demon. It was literature that kept his sanity and from ruining himself as a complete alcoholic.
Just like Franz Kafka, Bukowski always distrusted authorities, be it his father at home, or the government, or the literary establishment. In 1944, he was accused of evading army draft and arrested, but he failed a psychological test which saved him from fighting in the Second World War. But he lived under FBI suspicion, first due to his German heritage during the war, but later due to his newspaper column, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man." In 1955, he nearly died due to an ulcer.
Throughout his life, he moved from menial job to mindless work. He says: "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors." But he continued writing despite failing to publish in prestigious magazines. Just like Franz Kafka, it was his writing that kept him going and gave him a purpose. His breakthrough came at the age of 49 when he was asked to quit his post office job and write full-time. For the next 25 years, he published 6 novels, 35 poetry collections, 15 short story collections, 10 non-fiction books, and a few films and screenplays. He died in 1994, aged 73.
Now, let me briefly summarize his novels. Bukowski’s first novel, *Post Office*, published in 1971, is about a man working at the post office for 11 years and leaving without a penny. His second novel, *Factotum*, came out in 1975, about a man moving from job to job like a bee or butterfly. His third novel, *Women*, published in 1978, is about a man who goes from woman to woman like a bunny. *Ham on Rye*, published in 1982, is about the ugly side of growing up and how a bullied child became a tough guy. His fifth novel, *Hollywood*, published in 1989, is about his adventure of making a movie. His last novel, *Pulp*, published in 1994, is about the art of bad writing.
In all his novels, Chinaski, his alter ego, is the protagonist, so it’s safe to say all his novels are highly autobiographical. Also, one of the most unique aspects of Bukowski is his spare use of language: minimalistic, to the point, and no fluff. I absolutely loved his tone of voice, someone who doesn't care what people think of him and tells things as they are. A complete outsider to the literary establishment, he created a huge ripple in literature and is today considered one of the most unique voices of the 20th century. Kafka 2.0.
These 11 lessons, based on his writings and life, will give you a new way of looking at literature, writing, and life, but it will help you understand Bukowski and his philosophy on writing and life. Bukowski acknowledged his demons, mainly alcohol, his somewhat troubled relationships with women, and his deep mistrust of the establishment and sometimes a mistrust of humanity as a whole. Let’s begin.
10 Lessons
Lesson 1: Don’t try. Society, by which I mean Capitalism, tells you, in order to be happy, you need a bigger house and shit tons of stuff. To be a good consumer, you have to work hard. Try hard. Your parents tell you to become a doctor or engineer. Study hard. Bukowski, on his tombstone, has a simple message: don't try. What does it mean? You can read this message in two totally different ways. One way to look at it is a nihilistic and pessimistic one. There is no point in trying because you are going to end up in a small plot of land and food for worms and maggots. But I think Bukowski has a message of optimism. How? Well, it is quite simple. Bukowski tried to be a writer and artist. A lot. Aged 24, he published some short stories in some unknown magazines. He tried the big magazines. Nothing happened. He quit writing for 10 years. But learned that he couldn't quit writing forever. It only happened when he was almost 50 years old. There are two takeaways here. He tried to be a writer. He failed. He tried again. Failed many times. Then he became a writer. That’s when he stopped trying, because by then he had found the flow. Malcolm Gladwell came up with 10,000 hours for professional athletes and great artists to master their craft. Taoism, the ancient religion of China, teaches the same flow, action without effort. After years of writing, Bukowski found his flow. Then he didn't have to try. Quote: "Find what you love and let it kill you." 10% of climbers never return from Mount Everest and 30% from K2. Most people think that’s madness. Yes, passion is madness. Bukowski was nothing else but a writer. Quote: "Writing has saved me from the mad house, from murder and suicide. I still need it. Now. Tomorrow. Until the last breath." But how did he find his flow? Two things. First, he wrote and wrote and wrote. A lot. Second, he found his flow by being himself. Let me explain it in Lesson 2.
Lesson 2: Don’t try too hard to fit in. Bukowski grew up an outsider. Just like Kafka, Bukowski’s father pestered and abused him. At school, he was bullied because of his half-German accent, a face full of acne, and his anti-social character. But despite all that, or perhaps because of all those things, he didn't try to bullshit his way to acceptance by others. Instead, he avoided people. He lived like a lone wolf, with dead authors like Dostoevsky, Knut Hamsun, and Celine as his only guiding gurus. All those authors were considered criminals at some point during their lifetime. Bukowski could understand them better than those around him because he was an outsider himself, but he didn't give a shit. He didn't try to be normal. Quote: "Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don’t know the word. I have always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions. I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces. I’m more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society." Later, he understood that over time, right and wrong, good and evil, normal and abnormal change, just like climate. At some point in history, saints were criminals and criminals were saints. Just like Dostoevsky, Bukowski loathed the all-knowing and righteous people as full of bullshit. Quote: "Probably in history, more harm was done by guys thinking they were human beings than any other sort." Terrible economic crises, political catastrophes, and violent wars happen because of bankers, politicians, and intellectuals, not ordinary people. Bukowski’s novels and stories are mostly about the average men and women, not great heroes. Quote: "I have no message to the world. I am not wise enough to lead, yet I am wise enough not to follow." So for Bukowski, the definition of normal is generally imposed on us from above. So to be the so-called normal person, sometimes we lie. We bullshit. To find your genuine self, let’s go to Lesson 3.
Lesson 3: Tell the truth. To fit in and look normal, we often bullshit our way into a circle, community, and society. In the process, we lose our true sense of self, our honesty, and integrity. Kafka said humans are animals with a grandiose notion of themselves. Bukowski called himself a turd with an ambition to be a writer. We have learned to never show any weakness in ourselves, so not only to deceive others but also ourselves. By calling himself a turd, Bukowski is telling that by keeping a bullshit façade of ourselves, we may never achieve our true potential because we try to please others. Bukowski’s message was simple: You can’t please everyone, so don't even try. "Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn." Today, for example, social media is full of maniacs shouting for attention. Big media companies are no different. To get our attention, there’s so much turd flying about, but so little substance. We have acquired too many social filters: rationality, morality, being nice, salesmanship, or whatever you name it, have become so strong that nobody says the truth anymore, and only alcohol or drugs allow some honesty, but for the most part, people keep a clean façade. Those without a clean façade are considered losers. According to Bukowski, only time will tell if you’re a loser or not. To be an artist, you have to tell the truth, because, quote: "Creation carries its own truth or lie, and only the years can name which it is." Bukowski didn't have to try because he wrote what he saw. He turned his own turd into art by telling the truth. Quote: "Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life, and those living life have been excluded from literature." He filled that gap by not filtering things out. He told the truth. To those around him, Bukowski was a loser for most of his life. A failure. But he found that liberating because…
Lesson 4: Failure is freedom, an advantage, because it gives you clarity. A chance to examine priorities. To start afresh. Quote: "It’s best to stay loose, work wild and easy and fail any way you want to." To truly understand failure as freedom is to understand I’m nothing. For billions of years, I didn't exist. And for billions more years, I won’t exist. I’m free to make mistakes. According to Bukowski, no matter how much you try, you will not always get things right. Quote: "I have no idea at the time of the writing. I am a feeler, not a thinker. I am often wrong, I write much crap, and the nature of much of my work is a gamble." Accepting our nothingness allows us to be spontaneous. In his novel, *Factotum*, the protagonist simply walks away from jobs when he feels it is time. He walks away from his partners when he feels it is time. He doesn't linger. There’s no going back and forth. Despite his endless jobs, he never has enough money. Enough food. Enough things. When asked what was behind his success, Bukowski says: "A brutal childhood, alcohol, half a dozen rotten jobs, a dozen rotten women, plus an overpowering fear of almost everything, plus a strange arrival of luck and bravery in sub-zero situations." No success without a few failures is such a cliché. But Bukowski goes deeper. If writing gives you a buzz, makes you alive, do it despite knowing that you will never make it. It’s that discomfort that defines your existence. Only time can tell whether you got it right or wrong.
Lesson 5: Don’t seek comfort above all else. Life’s meant to be a struggle. Capitalism promises comfort if we slave our lives. In *Post Office*, Bukowski’s main character is given a job for life at the US Postal Service, which means he has to keep his head low and slave through his life until he no longer can. Bukowski says being in prison is the best job security in the world. Enough food, no tax, no social security. A zoo animal is comfortable. Capitalism has created a zoo for us all. In *Factotum*, the protagonist lives like a wild animal, moving from job to job. Marries and then divorces. A few more times. Animals look for food when hungry and only take what it needs. We humans accumulate. Capitalism promotes greed by telling us to own more, consume more, and chase more for future comfort, so much so that we forget the now. This madness to own more stuff ultimately possesses us and turns us into consumerist zombies. Capitalism promises you happiness, and wants you to slave away your life making money for your boss. Happiness. It’s a lie. Nobody knows what will make you happy in the future. As I discussed in my Proust video, only your future self can tell you that. Chasing comfort so you are happy is the wrong goal anyway, which I discussed in my video on Dostoevsky. Happiness should come as a by-product of what you do, not what you are. After 11 years in the post office, Bukowski’s protagonist leaves without a penny. A perfect metaphor for life. However long we live on this earth, we leave without a penny. Bukowski’s message is that comfort and happiness are false promises. Instead, we should find our creativity that challenges our souls and gives us a kick. Bukowski says: "No reward is greater than the doing. What comes after word is more than secondary."
Lesson 6: Write to knock the giants out of their pedestals. This advice applies to any creative mind: writer, artist, engineer, or scientist. Children want to surpass their parents' achievement. Scientists want to surpass their teachers and heroes. Bukowski says: "I kept writing not because I felt I was good but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those." What it means is that there should be an emotional force behind your creativity. You can’t become an artist by thinking it. You can only do it if you have an emotional motivation or passion. Reason or rationality cannot replace passion in toppling things. When you fall in love, you do things far beyond your capability. The same goes for hatred. Or jealousy. Bukowski wrote because he thought there were so few good writers out there. Whether he surpassed them or not is up to his readers. It didn't concern him. He wrote to topple the giants. To make a dent in the literary world. To piss off literary dinosaurs. Some publishers, even academics, and critics considered his writing too vulgar, too street, to be considered true literature. That’s what Bukowski wanted to do. He wrote what was true to him. What gave him a buzz. He wrote his life. Even today, despite him being accepted as a literary man, he is considered too vulgar to be included in literature curricula in some so-called respectable educational establishments. But despite all odds, he found his readers, and they love him for what he wrote and who he was. So to truly motivate your inner self, you should have a few targets in mind. Your goal should be to topple a few gods in your discipline. But that shouldn't be the only goal.
Lesson 7: Write because it gives you a buzz. Don't write to be famous. Bukowski wrote because he couldn’t stop, because writing came to him. Quote: "For me to get paid for writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money." Bukowski’s message is clear: write because that’s who you are. If you get bored writing something, the reader’s going to be bored reading it. Writer's block didn't happen to Bukowski. He says: "If I don’t write for a week, I get sick. I can’t walk, I get dizzy. I lay in bed, I puke. Get up in the morning and gag. I’ve got to type. If you chop my hands off, I would type with my feet." He often describes his writing like a disease for which he was thankful. It was his good disease. The others being alcohol and women. He sent out his stories and poems a lot. He got rejected. He sent some more. He got rejected some more. But he couldn't stop writing. Once he stopped for 10 years, but realized he couldn't. He wrote because it gave him the buzz. Quote: "My idea of a writer is somebody who writes. Who sits at a typewriter and puts the words down." We are fed the wrong idea that to be a writer is to be famous. So write because you get something out of it before someone reading it or paying you for it.
Lesson 8: Fiction is an improvement on life. He wrote about real life. Ordinary life. Nothing fantastic or magical. He made real life more beautiful. Funnier. Poetic. If fiction mirrored real life as it is, nobody wants to read it. Fiction has to improve life on the page and off the page. On the page, it has to present life in a new way that opens your eyes. See things differently by slowing down or speeding up time. It has to give the reader pleasure, or insight, or both. Quote: "Without literature, life is hell." Without literature, life is dull. Bukowski hated people playing the capitalist game. He says: "A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for a presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves." Bukowski wasn't alone in being alienated and disillusioned with society. Through his writing, he found millions of people feeling the same way. His poetry reading was a big hit in the 70s and 80s. He often read his poems while drunk, and this allowed catharsis among his listeners. His readers too found catharsis in his novels. Fiction allows many people an escape and freedom. Space to breathe freely. Many readers find their lost voices in Bukowski’s writings. His fiction allows us to see the world in a different light. With a fresher perspective. Bukowski’s writing is certainly an improvement on life because it enables us to learn and grow.
Lesson 9: Gender relations is the biggest human failure. Bukowski at one point said that his main flaw was being man. Being a man was a failure in itself. Evolution had dealt him a tough card. He had a love-hate relationship with women. On the one hand, he didn't want to be with one. "...women—good women—frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep." But on the other hand, he thought he didn't have enough of them. "Women: I liked the colors of their clothing; the way they walked; the cruelty in some faces…. They had it over us: they planned much better and were better organized. While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding—whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end, it hardly mattered; no matter what they did, we ended up lonely and insane." A man who doesn't feel the need for a woman is almost indestructible. There might be some truth in that gay people are more creative because they aren’t in a sexual dynamic with the opposite sex. Gender relations is difficult because of societal expectations telling men and women to behave in certain ways, so much so that most people are perpetually confused how to deal with the other gender. Bukowski says, treat every man and woman as if they’re individuals, not because of their gender. In his novel, *Women*, he documents the series of women he slept with, focusing less on being human but more like an animal who moves from partner to partner. He didn't resist his natural desire. He gave in to his urges. But society, or some people, didn't like him for that. So he avoided people. Bukowski acknowledged that perhaps his relationship with women was slightly one-sided; he took more than he gave them. In his novel, *Women*, when aspiring male writers approach him, he ignores them because they don't have a vagina. But when women contact him, he is always on the lookout to find how they look and if they’re available.
Lesson 10: Cherish your solitude. Bukowski was a true individualist who thought hell was other people, as the French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had said. A lone wolf. Making himself the main character in all his novels, Bukowski found the freedom to be truthful, insightful, and profound. A distilled version of life. With less bullshit. With more depth. No matter how vulgar to some people, his unique voice came out because he didn't try to bullshit his way to literary genius. He wrote what he lived and felt. How did he find his voice or clarity to connect with his audience on a deeper level? Perhaps it was his solitary existence. That solitude gave him the clarity to find his voice. His voice became many people’s voice because we are all deeply solitary animals despite the millions of years of social evolution. We are alone. We are born alone and die alone. Bukowski enjoyed being alone. He found people annoying, phony, and full of shit. So there is nothing wrong with being alone, if you feel like it. You don't have to mingle with others on weekends because everyone does it. You don't have to share a meal, drink, or even God with others. You can be by yourself. If you don't like being by yourself, then grab a book and read.
Lesson 11: Modernity has killed individuality. Making himself the main character of all his novels allowed Bukowski more freedom to be truthful about a slice of life. But it's also a huge weakness. Reading all his novels, you feel he is telling the same story over and over. The same character, Mr. Chinaski. Dostoevsky invented a variety of contrasting characters: extreme rationalists, passionate romantics, religious zealots, murderers, intellectuals, and more. Kafka was mostly his own protagonist, all with K in their names, as in Kafka. Marcel Proust too was his own protagonist, Marcel. We have become more self-centered as a species. These great writers are like the prototype modern men. They could be anyone. Modernity has destroyed individuality. So much so that individuals of past centuries don't exist anymore. We have become sponges. We absorb culture so much that we lose ourselves. Writers like Kafka, Proust, and Bukowski found themselves. Their stories resonate with us because we see ourselves in their novels: our stifled voices and emotions. Their writings liberate us from the cultural shackles of modernity that forces us to conform, be like everyone else, identify within a group. Bukowski drank alcohol to numb the pain and pressure of modern existence, but it was his writing that ultimately saved him and allowed him to cope with life. Pre-modern life was of survival for most people, or fight against external dangers, but modern life is a psychological warfare within ourselves. Bukowski warns that drinking doesn't make you a writer and shouldn't be romanticized so. It was his life. He was an outsider, a solitary wolf, and his love for writing that made him who he was and allowed him to escape society and modernity to some extent.
Here is a poem:
"great writers are indecent people
they live unfairly
saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world
so that bastards like me can keep creating art,
become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead
it means I made it."
Thank you for watching.