As mentioned in the "what You're reading Right Now" thread, I just finished Ham On Rye, by Charles Bukowski. I had never even heard of him before, so I was pretty psyched to a) find a book I really liked, and b) to have a whole body of works to read.

I liked Ham On Rye as soon as I read the first few sentences, and it lasted through the whole book. There is something about his writing style that strikes a chord with me, sort of the way I feel when reading Vonnegut, or Kosinski. There is something really clear in the presentation. Its like they use the least amount of words required to get the point across, and the point is better made for it. Like the sentence from Ham On Rye, "Kindergarden was mostly white air...". I read that and thought, "it sure was."

Now I am reading his poetry. I like most of it. I don't know any poetryspeak, but something about the poems (the meter? the rests?) is leaving me with the feeling of being sort of depressed on a really sunny day.

Next stop Septuagenarian Stew as recommended by sammael.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mudpuppy,

He is one of my favourite authors. "Hollywood" is excellent,as is "pulp" which is totally different and unexpected to his previous books.
Also check out his collected letters,they are a good read and quite poetic too.

Read The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship this weekend. Its not a novel or poetry, just a journal, but still a good read!

Started Women last night.

Almost finished with Women. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, its very engaging, and I like the way the words are laid out. The content, however, can get pretty dark.

Its just hard sometimes to say "I like that book" when the main character commits rape, or at least blurs the lines so you are not sure what the character did. I guess thats an anti-hero? I've been in this situation with books before. Its like your bumping along, enjoying yourself, then suddenly the book has you taking part in something thats morally wrong (at least to you). I don't know, I don't think I'm explaining it clearly.

So yeah, I still like the book but I guess I'm shocked by some of the lows, and I feel conflicted by some of the content.

-elbell- Don't read Robert McLiam Wilson's 'Ripley Bogle' or 'Manfred's Pain.'
Both novels, while quite brilliantly written, sucker-punch the reader as you described. I don't much like being manipulated in such a manner either. Dark heroes, I enjoy, but there are certain levels of depravity that exclude the possibility of ever attaining heroic status. A fallacy in real life, perhaps (Lewis Carroll, for example, was a paedophile, who took pornographic photographs of Alice Liddle, the girl he based his Alice adventures on - hence I never read any of his work, brilliant as it may be, for the art has been perverted, and I find it entirely questionable, concerning motives) but if I wanted true life, I wouldn't be reading fiction. I ought to read more Bukowski too - I'm just too busy living like he did.

quote:

Originally posted by -elbell-:
Almost finished with Women. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, its very engaging, and I like the way the words are laid out. The content, however, can get pretty dark.

Its just hard sometimes to say "I like that book" when the main character commits rape, or at least blurs the lines so you are not sure what the character did. I guess thats an anti-hero? I've been in this situation with books before. Its like your bumping along, enjoying yourself, then suddenly the book has you taking part in something thats morally wrong (at least to you). I don't know, I don't think I'm explaining it clearly.

So yeah, I still like the book but I guess I'm shocked by some of the lows, and I feel conflicted by some of the content.

sounds like A Streetcar Named Desire. same situation where you don't know whether there's been a rape or not for sure, but there probably was, but dammit if I don't love Stanley, anyway. I think that's some of the best literature, where you end up questioning yourself and your own morality and limitations through your investment in the character.

on the other hand...

quote:

Originally posted by sammael:
A fallacy in real life, perhaps (Lewis Carroll, for example, was a paedophile, who took pornographic photographs of Alice Liddle, the girl he based his Alice adventures on - hence I never read any of his work, brilliant as it may be, for the art has been perverted, and I find it entirely questionable, concerning motives)

ha, you too? I can't read Carroll's work, either. too creepy once you know the backstory. I know lots of people who don't give a shit, and I can understand that, too, but I could never get past it. it's not just fiction anymore; it's real pedophilia, and he really doped up little girls for his own amusement. how fucked up is that?

Earlier Bukowski thread

Some of Carroll's photos are creepy, but hardly pornographic. And what about Lolita, does it matter that Nabokov didn't actually shag young girls? I wouldn't do the stuff in Portnoy's Complaint, Tropic of Cancer, Story of O, Ballard's Crash, etc. but looking into the minds of the twisted can help us deal with our own darkness.

so we're just gonna ignore the fact that he was getting them high then stripping them? *eyebrows* I mean, I know a lot of people do, but I just...can't. but I do differentiate between fiction and reality; fiction is cathartic and can be didactic—keeping it from becoming reality.

Zoneseek, thanks for the thread link.

Sammael, now I'm interested in Robert McLiam Wilson's 'Ripley Bogle' or 'Manfred's Pain.'! Darn the reverse psychology!

I finished Women. I think its a good book. Its been a thought provoking experience. I'm torn between liking the character's honesty and wanting to punch him in the face. But if I did punch him I have no doubt I'd be punched right back. Then we'd have drinks, then go to bed, then have more drinks, and then fight.

Apathy, you're right with the Streetcar reference. I guess this is a type of male character who is very strong and charismatic and animalistic and flawed.

But as far as the words go, I like them.

Just started Pulp.

quote:

Originally posted by -elbell-:
I'm torn between liking the character's honesty and wanting to punch him in the face. But if I did punch him I have no doubt I'd be punched right back. Then we'd have drinks, then go to bed, then have more drinks, and then fight.

a part of me thinks that if the violence is doled out from both sides, it's not exactly abuse. I mean, I know a guy can do way more damage to a woman than vice versa, so I'm not saying it's okay. but some people just have big emotions and big tempers, and they should be paired up with other people who have big emotions and big tempers so that the dynamic is balanced—but not so that they can whale on each other, right? but an exchanged slap in the context of a relationship with mutually physical people? eeeehhh...

It's a debate that continues to rage, whether Carroll really was a paedophile, or whether he was an artist expressing himself through taking what we, as modern viewers, regard as at least semi-pornographic photographs of little girls. Many choose to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not one of them.

Elbell: Ripley Bogle is about a young man from Belfast, who suffered greatly during the troubles and is homeless in London: my friend, Carlo Gebler knows the author quite well and he is, by all accounts, an eccentic recluse - the story seems to be at least semi-autobiographical, and it would be regarded as something of a modern literary classic - I just wanted to offer a brief insight without giving too much of the plot away, and it is, despite what I said earlier, a worthwhile read, simply for the elegance of the language alone.
Wilson's second novel, Manfred's Pain, is a bleak, unforgiving (to society) account of a lonely old man who is suffering from terminal cancer - it's hard not to pity the character, but whether he is deserving of pity or revulsion is another matter. I know, I'm being deliberately intriguing.

If you enjoyed Bukowski's style of writing, his succinctitude and spartan economy, you should perhaps try some Edward Bunker - No Beast So Fierce, The Animal Factory (made into a film with Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, and - worth watching for this alone - Mickey Rourke in drag - also, Bunker himself cameos as a trustee/orderly), Little Boy Blue, Dog Eat Dog and his autobiography, Mr Blue, which is absolutely fascinating (so titled because he played the character of Mr Blue in Quentin Tarantino's gangster movie Reservoir Dogs). Sadly, like Bukowski, Bunker is no longer with us - he died in 2005, aged 71.

quote:

Originally posted by sammael:
It's a debate that continues to rage, whether Carroll really was a paedophile, or whether he was an artist expressing himself through taking what we, as modern viewers, regard as at least semi-pornographic photographs of little girls. Many choose to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not one of them.

who cares? kids that age can't make those kinds of choices for themselves, and it's not like he had the parents nearby to monitor the situation. and, hell, he was getting them high, so, even if they were old enough to consent to this thing, they wouldn't have been sober enough to do it, anyway.

*walks away grumbling*

God, I'm just getting it all wrong today, aren't I? Serves me up for being up all night, drinking. I loathe Carroll, more than that, I think his books should be banned (and I regard the banning of any book as the worst kind of fascism, nevertheless....I find them entirely sinister and creepy as hell, disturbing on every psychological and emotional level and entirely unsuitable reading material for children). Were he alive today, I'd gladly kick him into a coma...hmmm...thinking about something I couldn't possibly post, for fear of self-incrimination.

no, I'm just being a sychophant. except I'm completely serious. I can't say I'd want to ban his books, but I think I would've had the urge to kick the shit out of him if I'd been around to meet him. worst kind of coward, to prey on children like that.

I did 6 months (half of a 12 month sentence) in prison back when I was 23, for attacking a paedophile and I've absolutely no regrets. I know that, intellectually, in a civilised society, we can't just hurt or kill such monsters, but, emotionally, I can't make sense of the reasoning behind that, save to be bitter and start spiralling into conjectural conspiracy theories revolving around MPs and other figures of authority picking up 14 year old runaways and the like. It hurts me to write about these things, even to think about them, but I do feel I'd be a lesser man than the poor demented thing I already am if I failed to.

you remind me of the husband (in several ways, but in particular) in that we have lengthy discussions about the dubious morality of vigilante justice. I tend to err on the side of your intellectual misgivings, and he tends to err on the side of your emotional impulses.

in any event, they deserve whatever they get. and it's certainly an issue that "civilized" culture hasn't been able to address adequately.

Will they ever? I know that here, where I live, in Belfast, and Northern Ireland in general, rape and incest are huge issues that have, due to the 30-years of 'Troubles' largely, until recent times, been neglected and pushed under the carpet - as have so many other serious social problems - child poverty, domestic abuse, organised prostitution, to name but a few. I do believe in hope - have to really - but sometimes, it's just so damned hard, when so many people prefer to resort to nimbyism...and when it does happen to them or those they love, that's often - terribly - the only way many people really appreciate these problems. These things are bad enough in 'civilised' Western societies, but in the 'developing' countries? God, it's despairing.

I was watching Miami Ink last night, and they had a guy come in whose daughter had been kidnapped, raped/molested over a rather lengthy time period (I don't remember how long), and then buried alive by a guy who'd already been busted twenty-three times for sex offences.

the father is now lobbying across the country for a 25-year sentence with no early release for child molesters, and a life sentence with no chance of parole for second time offenders, which I thought was pretty bitchin'. he said 26 states had already passed some version of his proposal, which I also thought was pretty bitchin'.

really, I think that's reasonable legally speaking. the real problem beyond that may be the fact that people don't generally want to speak up about this sort of thing. silent victims are probably everywhere. getting people to understand that it's okay to speak up will probably be the hard part.

Apathy and Sammael, I can tie your discussion to Bukowski's book Women. There is one part where the main character Hank Chinaski is intimate with a 90lb girl who tells him she is 18. In his mind he exhaults the experience as being raped by a child. And of course he is loving it. So this character is a bit of a monster.

Gah, its so depressing. And here I was coming to the thread with a hopeful point: that he didn't even really start his career as a writer until age 35. This gives me hope that there is still time to fulfill ones dreams.

It always had been - there's almost as much of a stigma attached to victims as perpetrators, which is just so terribly wrong. And yet: did you read 'The Doll's House'? (Mr Gaiman's 'Sandman' graphic novel, not the Ibsen play). There's the cereal/serial convention and Funhouse (the backstory of this character disturbed me so damned much I almost cried at the very idea: a predatory child rapist and killer operating in a major theme park; and the authorities being complicit in his crimes and covering them up to avoid scandal *shudders*). Yet, when he tries to rape Rose Walker and Morpheus intervenes and sends him into a dream where he's the Friendly Giant from the beautiful Oscar Wilde story (all Wilde's children's stories are simply gorgeous and heart-breaking in a good warm way), there's something so simple and wondrous and touchinig about that, that it overcomes the horror of the character. I'm not eplaining this very well, because it had an emormous emotional impact on me and I tend to over-rationalise at the best of times, yet the outcome felt entirely right - if only such magic were truly possible. And I don't think Mr Gaiman was being an apologist or sympathiser of paedophiles - I feel it's more that he, as intelligent people really should, tries to find another option almost all the time, which is quite brilliant, really - like in the Fear of Falling story in (I think) Fables and Reflections. Every coin, remember, has 3 sides...head, tail, outer rim. Why can't we, as human beings, find proper solutions to our real problems, huh? (Wails plaintively and wishes on the moon).