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I was told I was in the Science Club in high school. I don't remember it. I bet it was wild.

Saturday, February 03, 2007


Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame by Charles Bukowski

some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here's a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.

I don't really know what to say about the life of Charles Bukowski, other than that he spent most of his life as a boorish drunk postman/barhopper with ridiculous poetic ambitions that were amazingly realized. There is not much redemption in his story. For most of his life, if his numerous autobiographical tomes are to be interpreted, he was an acne-ridden slob who could not hold down a job, a woman, or regular room and board. Then his poems became a success, he was an underground sensation, and he traveled the country to give drunken poetry readings and cryptic answers to 'Zine lapdogs. Anyone who wants to know more about the last sentence can see the recent documentary BORN INTO THIS, where Bukowski seems at once arrogant and befuddled by and about his ability to write poetry.

The average person does not know Charles Bukowski, and this is ironic because it is the average person he thinks he is writing about. But Bukowski's averages are grotesques: lonely, irresponsible loudmouths who manage to piss off every boss they ever worked for. It is the critics who find that Bukowski supremely represents the bridge and tunnel crowd.

Still, I've always found Bukowski to be a fascinating poet and novelist, ever since Ben and I attempted to adapt his last novel, PULP, into a screenplay. His HAM ON RYE is one of my favorite books. He writes about the underbelly from the underbelly, without any attempts at sympathy or objectivity. It is raw, unforced, and immediate - gutter poetry, I've heard it called, and that about gets it.

The latest attempt at a Bukowski movie, FACTOTUM, is hit or miss. In the 80s, critics fawned over the Bukowski adaptation BARFLY. Bukowski apparently hated it, and chronicled the experience in the superlative "novel" HOLLYWOOD. BARFLY starred Mickey Rourke as Bukowski alter-ego Henry Chinaski, and stumbled around the whole movie talking like Snagglepuss. I found it to be an annoying performance in a dull movie. FACTOTUM stars Matt Dillon, an actor I've always liked, and while Dillon does not give into Rourke-esque indulgence, he is wrong for Chinaski. Chinaski is a pug-ugly, pudgy loser who could have only existed in 1940. Dillon is a former teen idol. Sadly, like Rourke, his movie star looks will always haunt him, because this is the role he seems to enjoy the most - depraved, wayward, and rough.

The biggest problem is the curious decision to the update the time. There are many adjectives that can be used to describe C.B., but "timeless" is not one of them. His novels are rooted in a period; Chinaski rejects a very particular, archaic set of values that made him an iconoclast at the time, but today would make him at home with many. In reading the novels, he is the antithesis of the so-called greatest generation - and thats what made him such a compelling literary figure: his refusal to buy into any of the party lines. Today, of course, one out of every three people you meet are the antithesis of the greatest generation.

Chinaski was Bukowski's warped, brilliant attempt at the picaresque tradition - where the rogue hero grows only through his misadventures. But he's also a naive in the tradition of Forrest Gump or Candide, whose apparently world-weariness is countered by his discomforting (often grotesque) childishness and need for companionship. Like those heroes, Chinaski succeeds with wit, not knowledge, and instinct rather than understanding. This character seems out of place in a setting that is so obviously modern. The job-bouncing Chinaski would not be able to rent five dollar rooms anywhere. In FACTOTUM, he is an anachronism who is never explained, and this makes the film curiously disjointed.

Still, there is much to admire about the movie, particularly in the passionate performance of Lili Taylor. The film captures out-of-work lowlifes in the same way that Bukowski did - without degrading or sentimentalizing them in a Damon Runyan gallery of toughs. It has the typical crude, hilarious, and cringe-inducing humor of the best Bukowski work. At its worst moments, it gave further proof that no filmmaker will ever be able to capture Bukowski, thus never exposing him to a wider audience. At its best, it reminded me of the brilliant closing losing lines of HAM ON RYE, perhaps my favorite ending of any novel. Chinaski, unemployed and penniless, covered in acne that is at once his badge and his scar, plays a primitive robot boxing game with a Mexican boy. The fighters fight; Chinaski loses. Bukowski writes:

"I put in another dime and blue trunks sprang to his feet. The kid started squeezing his one trigger and the right arm of red trunks pumped and pumped. I let blue trunks stand back for a while and contemplate. Then I nodded at the kid. I move blue trunks in, both arms flailing. I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important?
And another part of me answered, just because it is.
Then blue trunks dropped again, hard, making the same iron clanking sound. I looked at him laying on his back down there on the little green velvet mat.
Then I turned around and walked out."

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