”The racetrack was important to me because it allowed me to forget that I was supposed to be a writer. Writing was strange. I needed to write, it was like a disease, a drug, a heavy compulsion, yet I didn’t like to think of myself as a writer. Maybe I had met too many writers. They took more time disparaging each other than they did doing their work. They were fidgets, gossips, old maids; they bitched and knifed and they were full of vanity. Were these our creators? Was it always thus? Probably so. Maybe writing was a form of bitching. Some just bitched better than others.”Henry “Hank” Chinaski can’t believe he is still alive. His hard drinking, hard living contemporaries are all dead. He is the last barfly standing. He has simplified his life, married a good woman, cut down his drinking, quit eating sugar and red meat, and relaxes by going to the racetrack everyday. The diseased part of his life, the writing, is still there humming in the back of his brain, regardless of how much he drinks or how many horse races he watches. He has to write. ”I was hot with words.”After decades of being poor and ignored, he finally gets his chance when Hollywood comes calling and wants him to write a screenplay. He doesn’t write screenplays, but the money they are offering is outrageous. He decides he won’t write a great one, but he is quite capable of writing a good one. ”A bird flies, a snake crawls, I change typewriter ribbons.”There is no way to prepare for Hollywood. The movie is on. The movie is off. The egos, the pettiness, the illogical thinking, the extravagant gestures, the insecurities, and the constant upheaval is at first stressful for Hank, but as he starts to get his bearings the whole situation becomes more amusing. It really is no different than when he worked for the Post Office. His wife Sarah sums him up. ”Your greatest strength,” said Sarah, “is that you fear everything.”“I wish I’d said that.”There can be a certain serenity achieved when you finally realize that everything is to be feared, that nothing, nobody, and nowhere are safe. Death and pain can find you anywhere. Henry has experienced more than his share of disappointment, criticism, and loss, and now that he has finally scored a big financial hit... he is bemused. He has made enemies with his writing. ”My enemies are the source of half my income. They hate me so much that it becomes a subliminal love affair.” He never pulled any punches. The more people rail against his writing the more copies he sells. Women think he hates them, but it is much more complicated than that. He just doesn’t treat them any different that he treats anyone else. He talks about a novelist, someone not unlike himself, who he admires. ”What I liked best about him was that he had no fear of the feminists. He was one of the last defenders of maleness and balls in the U.S. This took guts. I wasn’t always pleased with his literary output but I wasn’t always pleased with mine either. “”The booze loosened those typewriter keys, gave them some spark and gamble.” Like the actor that does cocaine before a performance, or the stockbroker who takes speed before giving a million dollar pitch, or the car salesman who can only be who he feels he needs to be when he is on meth, Hank performs better, writes better, when he has been drinking...heavily. A large percentage of our population self-medicate for several different reasons, maybe to ward off depression, maybe to perform at a perceived higher level beyond ourselves, or maybe in an attempt to escape everything. Tune in. Tune out. We are forced to be someone other than ourselves for too many hours a day. Sometimes we need help to escape, and sometimes we need help finding ourselves again. Henry Chinaski is Charles Bukowski’s alter ego. Most, if not all, of Bukowski’s work is autobiographical, so whatever happens to Chinaski in some form or fashion probably happened to Bukowski. When Bukowski was approached by Hollywood to write a movie script, the result was the critically acclaimed movie Barfly (1987) starring Mickey Rourke. There is this poignant scene in the book where Henry and Sarah go to see the movie at the theater and arrive early, so they can see how many people come out of the theater from the early showing. One, Two, five, eleven, and on and on. I understand that need for validation. It is impossible to separate Bukowski from his books which is maybe why the criticism stings him more because those being critical aren’t judging his books or his characters, but judging him. If you’ve never read a Charles Bukowski, and you want to ease into his work, this is probably the best place to start. He isn’t as irreverent or crude or “misogynistic” or as perverse as his other books. You’ll meet a baffled survivor, unsure of why he has been given all this extra time and wondering how much more he is going to have to do. As long as he lives, he will have to write and that is exactly what Bukowski did. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Cuando lee uno las críticas que la gente lanza a los libros de Hank, se encuentra con que la mayoría se refieren lo mismo a la temática abordada que al modo en el que esta es tratada. «Indecencias», dice algún alma pura, de esas que no faltan. «Porquerías», dice alguien con un marcado complejo higiénico. «Historias estúpidas de borrachos depravados», tercia el que, seguramente, es el representante local de AA. Por ahí va la cuestión.Luego de leer lo que, sucintamente, he mencionado en el párrafo anterior, resulta por demás desconcertante que una obra como Hollywood sea también objeto de críticas severas. O más que severas. «Ese no es Bukowski», coinciden en señalar la mayoría de ellas. ¿No lo es? «No», sentencian. «Ese es un impostor». Y quizá tengan razón en decirlo. O quizá se equivocan por completo. Habrá, sin embargo, que abordar el problema por partes.Lo primero es decir de qué va la obra. Si usted quiere leerla, ya sabe: suspenda aquí. Luego no diga que no se le advirtió que habrá algún tipo de avance del texto. Dicho lo anterior, conviene comenzar por lo más elemental: Hollywood aborda el proceso de creación de Barfly, la película realizada por Barbet Schroeder a partir de un guión de Bukowski. ¿Nada más? Nada más. Ello determina que la novela, como tal, tenga un solo fin y una sola línea argumentativa, que no es otra que la que se teje en torno a las complicaciones halladas antes, durante y después del proceso de filmación. ¿Problemático? En absoluto. Hank —es decir, su alter ego, Chinaski— interactúa con una serie de personajes más o menos reconocibles, desde los protagonistas de la película —Mickey Rourke y Faye Dunaway— hasta un conjunto variopinto de cineastas y actores más o menos enloquecidos, más o menos excéntricos, más o menos subnormales. ¿Problemático esto otro? No, tampoco.¿Cuál es, entonces, el centro de las críticas? Uno muy simple. Tanto, que incluso resulta estúpido: Chinaski ya no es pobre. Ha triunfado. Lo que se veía más que lejano en Post Office, en Ham on Rye y en Factotum, es ahora una realidad: Chinaski ha logrado sobreponerse a la adversidad y se ha convertido en un autor de éxito. Tanto, que hasta se da el lujo de comprar una casa y de pasearse por los bulevares de Los Ángeles a bordo de su flamante BMW begro. Ese es el conflicto de los lectores. Como Chinaski ya no es un pobre diablo —o un diablo pobre, que lo mismo da—, asumen que ha perdido autenticidad. Parecería que Bukowski solo podía escribir de Chinaski desde la miseria, desde los departamentos baratos que ocupaba unos cuantos días, o unos meses, hasta que lo echaban por uno u otro motivo y debía salir a buscar otro lugar para instalarse con sus pocas ropas, su botella, sus cigarros y su máquina de escribir. ¿Bukowski es rico? Ya. Pues que deje de escribir. He ahí el problema. Un problema basado, como siempre, en una lectura cifrada en los temas que desarrollaba Hank, no en el modo en el que los trataba. Una crítica que descalifica al autor simplemente porque ahora come bien, viste mejor, vive en su propia casa y tiene un buen auto, lo que no implica que su escritura sea peor que antes. Porque si algo no sucede, si en algo no cayó nunca Hank, fue en la autocomplacencia. El tipo escribió desde sí mismo, con el estilo que pulió desde sus primeros textos, hasta el final, sin importar si tenía dinero o no, si andaba en el Volkswagen o en un BMW, si comía o si no. Ser Bukowski, lo he dicho ya en un par de ocasiones por aquí, le permitía a Hank escribir como Bukowski y ser fiel a la imagen de Bukowski. Suena un poco ridículo, y quizá lo es, pero es lo que hay. Descalificar al sujeto porque se ha convertido en un autor de éxito determinaría eliminar sus méritos como artista, el poder de su prosa y el proceso que llevaba a la formación general de sus textos. En suma, �daría la posibilidad de eliminar al autor, lo que quizá sea posible con algunos cuantos que, al conocer la fama, dejan de escribir como saben y comienzan a escribir como se supone que escriben los autores famosos, pero no con Bukowski. Con o sin recursos, la prosa es la misma. El estilo es el mismo. Hank es el mismo. El mismo guarro, si se le quiere ver así. Con un poco más de dinero, pero con las mismas ansias de enfrentarse al lector y hacerle saber su punto de vista en torno a lo que le rodeaba con su muy particular estilo y desde sus muy peculiares concepciones de la vida y el trabajo, por poner dos de sus temas más recurrentes. La vida, la botella, las mujeres, la gente, el trabajo. Los puntos nodales de la obra de Buowski. Los mismos a lo largo de toda su obra. Los que sostienen, lo mismo los primeros cuentos, que la última novela, la descabellada Pulp. Los mismos que permiten leer Hollywood sin sentirse traicionado, sin pensar que el autor se había vendido o caía en la indulgencia hacia sí mismo solo porque ya no debía pelear por ahí para conseguir un sándwich gomoso. Los mismos que hacen que las críticas caigan por su propio peso.
What do You think about Hollywood (1996)?
بوکفسکی فیلمنامه ای می نویسد به اسم خراباتی ها و بر اساس آن فیلمی ساخته می شود این کتاب داستان نوشتن فیلمنامه و دردسرهای ساخته شدن آن فیلم استالبته در داستان بعضی از اسم ها را تغییر داده مثلا اسم فیلم شده «رقص جیم بیم»، ژان لوک گدار شده «ژان لوک مُدار» و... داستان فیلم هم در مورد زندگی خودِ بوکفسکی استدر دوره ای که دائم الخمر بوده و کاری جز رفتن به بار و دعوا کردن نداشتهکتاب را دوست داشتم. ساده و روان است و تکه های طنز خوبی دارد. به نظرم حسن (و گاهی ضعف) بوکفسکی این است که خیلی ساده و صمیمی داستانش را روایت می کند و گاهی داستان شکل نمایشنامه به خودش می گیرد. ترجمه ی پیمان خاکسار هم مثل کارهای قبل اش خوب و روان استhttp://choobalef.blogfa.com/post/224
—mohsen pourramezani
Now, this book is quite different from other Bukowski's works I've read before. In here we meet the successful Henry Chinaski, the one who has made it and is finally able to make a living from his writing. In this context, there's no stark or brutal stories as we have known them from previous books.In this one, Chinaski is a well known author who is offered to write a screenplay. The book tells the story of the process of the screenplay writing, and the production and shooting of the movie (Barfly).In my opinion, this is the most humorous book from Bukowski by far. There's a little of looking at the past (the real difficult times). Nevertheless Buks managed to produced a really entertaining story, it is plenty of fun moments. Some of them seem to be unreal, and by all accounts a good part of them happened.I really enjoyed this one (I was even tempted to give 5 stars), I would even recommend this book to whoever wants to introduce to Bukowski's books.
—Sicofonia
If you read this book you really should see the movie Barfly, which is the movie Bukowski talks about in this book. The book has a ton of references to that film here as well as references to his life before recognition. It is easily the tamest Bukowski I've ever read and to be honest it was almost awkward at times just how subdued he managed to be. Therefore, it is somewhat ironic that it deals with the film which chronicles him as a scrappy young drunk but it is also interesting to see how much he's changed and how we find that he would like to return to those moments of drunken violence, despite their inherent negativity and self-destruction. That theme is consistent with vintage Bukowski which is finding something worthwhile where nobody else seems to be able to find it and that is why he's relevant. Overall I would only recommend this to Bukowski fans and only to those who have either I) seen the movie Barfly or II) read his earlier works (of which I recommend [i]Ham on Rye[/i] the most). The reason for number II is that if this is the first Bukowski you read you will get a first impression which is not accurate and is, in my opinion, very watered down. You have the core of what Bukowski does -- drinks, watches the horses run, writes, takes shots at cultural trends/phenomena, etc. -- but you don't have the authority of his earlier, more desperate work.
—Tom Steele
