Women by Charles Bukowski

This is probably one of the most controversial works by Bukowski, although all his works are more or less controversial.  It depicts the period of his life when he was already quite famous, though not famous enough to stop with the public readings.  Later on he started making enough money from royalties, so he stopped appearing in public, which he always hated, as he hated crowds, fakers, posers, and most people in general. 

The book describes his relationships with about a dozen women, who, with one or two exceptions, were all crazier than him, greater addicts than him, and more promiscuous than him, which is quite an achievement.  The longest relationship is with Lydia Vance, actually Linda King in real life, who comes across as a total psycho, though Bukowski rose up to be her equal, even breaking her nose in a fight once.  The other women are always-high-on-uppers Tammy, who slept around as much as she could, and even offered to blow her own brother; Katherine, a Texas cutie, who doesn't stay long, Iris, a British Columbian waitress with a hot body, Tanya, who couldn't give good blow jobs, and many others.

There are lots of accusations of misogyny thrown Bukowski's way because of this book, however he was always surprised by that, often repeating that he treats men much worse than women in his novels, and yet nobody complains about that.  Indeed the men in the novel are all opportunists, cowards, thieves, frauds, weaklings, without morals and generally unlikable. 

The book ends after he finally decides to shack up with Sara, who is a devotee of Dryer Baba (Meher Baba), and doesn't let him fuck her in the vagina until the very end of the book.  He talks a lot about "mounting" women for sex, and I guess many people take offense to that, but it is just another of his mannerisms and ways of speaking, which makes his prose more interesting to read. 

"Post Office" by Charles Bukowski

I've read some of Bukowski's poetry long time ago, when I was not much into reading poetry (you need to get old for that), so I soon forgot about it until recently (somehow) I remember him again and decided to read a novel from him - his first novel.

He wrote it in less than a month, and it is pretty short.  It probably would not have published today where publisher expect 700-page novels because they sell better to half-brained customers who do not know better.  It is pretty good though.

Pretty much everything in the novel is scaled down to the absolute minimum.  It reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk's writings, but without the agenda. The novel describes the 10 or so years that he spent working for the US Post Office and all the ins and out of job plus all the ladies he shacked with during that time.  The US Post office is described like something from a Kafka or Orwell novel, employing imbeciles with imbecilic rules and dark career prospects.  He describes how he was assigned the worst routes, because he always gave lip to his supervisors and never gave a damn about their imaginary authority. 

His descriptions of the women he lived with are very rudimentary, as he wasn't fully aware who they were.  That's probably true since he was drunk most of the time when he wasn't working and most of the working time he was hungover, so very little mental capacity remained to get to know someone deeper (except himself), besides the default biological, physiological and companionship needs.

I enjoyed his curt and to-the-point style, though, nowadays so much extreme garbage has been written, his expressions don't seem all that edgy anymore.