Septuagenarian Stew by Charles Bukowski

 This book pretty much concludes my reading of Buk's prose, novels and short stories, and some poetry.  I haven't read the majority of his poetry, which might be my next reading queue.  Septuagenarian Stew was published when Buk was in his 70s, therefor the title, and is a combination of stories and poems, that is narrative poems, which pretty much read like his short stories, just more compact, and with random line breaks, wherever he felt like.

The first story is pretty upsetting, about him and his friends as adolescents trying to hang, with a rope, a quiet kid from his neighborhood.  The kid almost choked on the rope and had scars on his neck from the slipknot that young Buk put on him, and tied the other end to his veranda, forcing the poor kid to balance on the tips of his toes to avoid being suffocated.  Young Buk ran away from the scene, but came back and released the rope, the poor kid being all purple in the face and barely breathing.  Later his father finds out and pounds him with his fist.  Disturbing, very disturbing, both as a commentary on US society in the 1930s, but also how Bukowski became a bully from being bullied himself. 

The other disturbing story is about his mother's cancer surgery, when he goes to visit her in the palliative care, but he is so hungover from drinking all night that he cannot stand the smells in the hospital and vomits in the rose garden.  He tells his mother he will come back tomorrow to see her.  She tells him that his father put her in the madhouse so that he can live with his mistress.  The next day Bukowski comes back with a bouquet of flowers, but his mother's rooms is locked and there is a wreath on the door.  She passed away the previous night. What an asshole will drink all night the day he should visit his mother in a hospital?

I read an article saying how Bukowski glorifies drunkenness, however there is nothing glorious about it, and only assholes do it the way he did.  He writes so many times how he drove dead drunk, but what if he hit a child or another person and killed them? Would it be so romantic and cool? Only selfish assholes drive drunk.

Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski

 This collection of short stories was published in 1983 and reviews say that it established Bukowski short story style and thematic range, however I was largely disappointed by the stories, as they are repetitive and sometimes boring (!).  Some are pretty good, but appeared in other places like "The Death of the Father", while others are pretty absurd like "I love you Albert". 

I am finishing another of his short story collections and I think I had enough of Bukowski for a while.  At least of his prose.  Maybe I will read some more of his poetry.  Maybe I will write some imitative Bukowksi poetry.  After all he is the most imitated poet in the English speaking world, so why not jump on the bandwagon.  It is kind of liberating to read his narrative poetry, without any regard for stylistic figures or metrics, with line breaks wherever he felt like, and entire dialogs and conversations woven in, so it could read like a really terse and compact short story if one removed the random line breaks and formatted it in proper paragraphs.  I think I am starting to like that.  Screw The Bard and his fucking boring sonnets.  Fuck literary rules and conventions!  Just let the blood and puss and gore and grit and shit pour out as they will!