Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars A Little Bukowski Goes a Long Way… Hot Water Music (1983) consists of thirty-six typical Bukowski short stories. They are mostly sordidly real but sometimes magically real and feature few epiphanies or transformations or triumphs but mostly endings where life in all its squalid glory goes on. The stories feature LA underbelly denizens like physically and or psychologically mutilated alcoholics, gamblers, writers, artists, editors, students, professors, prostitutes, fans, femme fatales, housewives, beggars, and bartenders. Many a first-person appearance by Henry “Hank” Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego. And many of the third-person narration protagonists just happen to be alcoholic writers not unlike Chinaski. The stories may shift into fantasy, as when a jealous skeleton throws a drink in the face of a bar customer after a woman who claims to have seen Joan of Arc burn gives him a hot kiss, or as when a woman’s brother teleports into the protagonist’s home right when he’s in his bed about to climax-cheat on his wife with the woman, or as when a husband and wife spend the night shooting each other with their gun and are woken up in the morning by the police complaining about domestic quarrel situations. The suspense-pleasure in reading the stories lies in wondering what dirty sexy gross person or event or situation will manifest next in Bukowski’s deadpan, dry, drawling voice, perfectly channeled by audiobook reader Christian Baskous. The best stories are humorous, irreverent takes on poets and poetry readings and the writing profession. I really like most of the Chinaski stories, especially the two about the funeral of his father. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of unpleasant, unenriching stories. These feature graphic violence, sex, and political incorrectness, especially regarding women, as in a line like, “a local feminist poet who had grown tired of blacks and now fucked a doberman in her bedroom.” Though Bukowski loved women in his way, his male characters say things like, “A female seldom moves away from one victim without having another,” and “Of course women were all crazy. They demanded more than there was.” And some of the women are monsters preying on men, liable to do something like bite off a piece of one’s penis during oral sex or drive off with one’s wallet, clothes, and car keys while one is in the motel shower. Mind you, Bukowski’s men often deserve such treatment, and the line “What women and men did to each other was beyond comprehension” echoes through the whole collection. Bukowski writes vivid descriptions like “She tasted like old postage stamps and a dead mouse,” “It was a nice Southern California morning, smoggy, stale, and listless,” and “Her eyes were large, stricken, and stale.” And lines that ring with dry wit and raw truth, like-- “They kill people by the millions in wars and give out medals for it.” “There was nothing worse than a reformed drunk and a born again a Christian, and Meyers was both.” “Love is a form of prejudice… You love what is convenient.” “The waiting room was full of people with no real problems: gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, cancer, and so forth.” “The only people who know what mercy is are those who need it.” References to Presidents Carter and Reagan, the Falkland’s War, and women’s lib date the stories, but on the other hand the sordid and hence vibrant human condition and cynical takes on America feel universal. As do references to the likes of Hemingway, Faulkner, Pirandello, Hesse, Chopin, and Camus. (Bukowski writes a funny riff on Camus’ existentialism being compromised by his elegant writing that reads like that of a man who’s just finished a rich steak dinner accompanied by fine French wine.) I mostly enjoyed the collection, but several Bukowski stories go a long way, and about a third of the way into the collection, I started getting jaded, and by the end I was ready for the end. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University