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What Fame Is: Bukowski's Exploration of Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Andrew J. Madigan
Andrew J. Madigan
Affiliation:
Instructor of American Studies and English, St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63103, U.S.A.
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Extract

Although this quote reads like a description of Hollywood and its celluloid environs, the author is reviewing Run With the Hunted: A. Charles Bukowski Reader, a comprehensive anthology of the poet-novelist's work. From Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960), his first full-length collection of poetry, to Pulp, published shortly after his death in 1994, Bukowski chronicled the humorous, lyric, impoverished lives of prostitutes, drinkers, bums, writers, and miscreants of every description. His tales of squalor which document the starving and passionate Angeleno writer are in large measure inspired by John Fante.

Los Angeles is Buk territory. He lived in and wrote about Central Los Angeles for most of his seventy-three years. L.A. is a place where, in the realm beyond fiction, people migrate in pursuit of dreams. One category of migrant dream-seeker is the writer. Whether he/she is a neophyte seeking fortune as a screenwriter or an aging, established author reviving an endangered career, the writer confronts an industry whose interests and intents are tangential to his/her own.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , December 1996 , pp. 447 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Young, Elizabeth, Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader rev., New Statesman & Society, 7 (1994), 37–8Google Scholar.

2 Fante (1909–1983), like Bukowski, wrote primarily in and of Los Angeles. They also share a propensity to cast themselves, loosely disguised, as fictional heroes. Fante's Saga of Arturo Bandini (Wait Until Spring, Bandini: The Road to Los Angeles; Ask the Dust; and Dreams of Bunker Hill) depicts the development of a poor, Italian writer in L.A. Fante also worked in film. His screenwriting credits include Full of Life, My Man and I, and Walk on the Wild Side. Bukowski wrote admiringly of Fante for years. Examples of his poem-odes to Fante are “result” and “suggestions for an arrangement,” both from War All the Time. Bukowski dedicates Dangling in the Tournefortia to Fante, many of whose works have been reprinted by Black Sparrow Press, Bukowski's publisher.

3 Bukowski often refers to himself and is referred to as Buk or the Buk-Beast.

4 Laurence, Frank M., Hemingway & the Movies (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981)Google Scholar.

5 Film critic Roger Ebert writes of Barfly: “One of the year's 10 best. A terrific movie. Completely original from beginning to end” (Barbet Schroeder, Barfly [Canon Films Inc., 1987], notes on video tape box). Ebert is Rick Talbot in Hollywood, who Bukowski depicts as friendly and congratulatory on the set. Ebert's television partner, Gene Siskel, is Hollywood's Kirby Hudson.

6 Schroeder, Barfly.

7 McMurtry, Larry, Film Flam (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)Google Scholar.

8 Jon Pinchot in Hollywood. The novel is dedicated to him, without whose fortitude Barfly would never have been produced. Dennis Hopper was also interested in directing the film. He wanted Sean Penn to play Chinaski. Penn and Hopper were fans of Bukowski's work. Unless otherwise noted, footnotes provide the true identities of the novel's “fictional” characters, films, books, etc. Ironically, the frontispiece of Hollywood declares: “This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental, etc.”

9 The Dance of Jim Beam.

10 Bukowski's alter-ego in many of his works, including Ham On Rye, Factotum, Post Office, and poems such as “on the hustle” in Dangling in the Tournefortia.

11 Linda Lee Beighle.

12 Jack Kerouac. A reference to another writer noted for frequent use of autobiography, the picaresque, and the roman a clef. One week following the Bukowski-opening episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, the show made reference to Kerouac: Dylan McKay and Brandon Walsh discuss On The Road and The Dharma Bums.

13 Bukowski, Charles, Hollywood (Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1990), 27Google Scholar. Subsequent references to this novel will be cited using parenthetical page documentation.

14 Luhr, William, Raymond Chandler & Film (Tallahassee, FL: The Florida State University Press, 1991), 8Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 57–8.

16 Based on an allegedly true exploit of Schroeder.

17 Schroeder's documentary of Idi Amin. He also directed Single White Female, Reversal of Fortune and Kiss of Death.

18 Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.

19 Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, and George Hamilton, respectively.

20 Harrison, Russell, Against the American Dream: Essays on Charles Bukowski (Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1994), 18Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., 16.

22 Barfly's Wanda (Jane in Hollywood) is the nationalization of Jane Cooney, a lover of Bukowski's.

23 Such as “attack and retreat” and “a poetry reading” from Dangling.

24 Screams From the Balcony, a collection of letters edited by Seamus Cooney, reveals (more clearly than Cherkovski's biography) something of the line between Bukowski's life and his fictional representation of life. His artistic isolation and dislike of creative movements or “generations” is undermined by corresponding with fellow writers such as Jory Sherman.

25 Bukowski, Charles, War All the Time: Poems 1981–1984 (Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1991), 257Google Scholar.

26 Carver (1939–1988) and Bukowski (1920–1994) both died, of lung cancer and leukemia respectively, at the height of their popularity. As Harrison insists, however, a creative writing chair would never be saved for Bukowski as was the case with Carver, “the academy's favorite rewrite man of the low-life experience” (Harrison, , Against the American Dream, 250Google Scholar). Both wrote of the alcoholic lives they experienced first-hand in an autobiographical, minimalist, Hemingswayesque style. Carver, like Bukowski, spent most of his life on the west coast and supported himself for many years with menial, itinerant jobs. His experience in film includes writing a screenplay about Dostoyevsky for director Michael Cimino, and Short Cuts, Robert Altman's posthumous adaptation of nine stories and one poem of Carver's.

27 Carver, Raymond, Fires (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1983) 57Google Scholar.

28 Carver, 60.

29 Bukowski, Charles, Dangling in the Tournefortia (Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1981), 164Google Scholar.

30 Young, , Run With the Hunted rev., 38Google Scholar.

31 Cherkovski, Neeli, Hank: The Life of Charles Bukowski (New York: Random House, 1991), xiGoogle Scholar.

32 Ibid., 259.

33 Dangling, 202Google Scholar.

34 Dangling, 270Google Scholar.