It's been many years since I have returned to Henry Chinaski (Charles Bukowski) and through Notes of a Dirty Old Man, I was taken on yet another sometimes befuddling and sometimes profound reading experience. Bukowski mixes his prose with personal anecdotes and downright ridiculous absurdity, like a train wreck of thought. As he was churning these out for the Open City press, I gather Bukowski would have been writing many of the stories for his own amusement, just to see how far he could stretch a tale into the obscenely bizarre - as there are many in this collection that defy reality, but it is pertinent as it is free flowing intoxicating imagination peppered with some predicaments like the piece about Bukowski's parents and the Frozen Man that is quite introspectively sad. As with the story of Neal Cassady, there is something profoundly swift in the way it opens up the wounds of humanity, to drain the infection. As the title suggests, these are notes, and the man penning them is dirty minded and getting on in life. You can't argue with that.Bukowski has morality and ethics, but they are measured within a tawdry urban world that is collapsing inside itself. For instance his shirt cardboard reflections, 'if you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence', in other societies and circles, the test of friendship would not be so extreme, but in Bukowski's world, a jail sentence would suffice as best a test of friendship as you can get. A writer like Wordsworth would draw for us the beauty of nature, but Bukowski points out that nature may be drawn as one thing but how it goes about its business of being natural is another thing entirely. He also speaks for the thoughts and actions of humanity that is not dogmatic idealism, some people are embarrassed when they fart, but imagine if they farted and had a follow through? This is what Bukowski is about. When the mind is roughing it, not taking the usual route. Notes of a Dirty Old Man has all the stickiness of ill mannered sex, sordid situations, crass thoughts, and broken down poetry, but it does feel good to read it, like taking hard liquor that burns the throat, once it hits the belly it loosens you up. This book is not for those seeking Dostoyevsky or Chekhov, tales of the poor, set in earnest poverty - if misfortune is a stream, some writers would write about people trying to get out of it, or simply being carried away by its current, but Bukowski writes about splashing, bomb diving, paddling, skinny dipping and fishing in that stream of misfortune. That's what you'll discover in its pages.
It's been three long days since I finished Notes. Under ordinary circumstances, this is where I'd move on to something else and forget everything about it. The whole reason for joining good reads was to keep track of all those books I simply cannot remember reading. Almost everything I pick up seems to be destined for this list- an attempt to remember the forgotten...the fallen comrades who have helped shape me into who I am today. If it sounds dramatic, maybe it is.This one, though, isn't easy to forget. Bukowski never is. Even those who don't like him would be forced to say that. It's his voice, I think. Open one of his books and you're sitting in a cheap apartment made of plywood, with no plumbing, attached to someone's tool shed. There's no electricity, no heat. It's cold and miserable, but you've got the voice of someone who knows speaking clearly into your ear, telling you that nothing is going to be okay. But, he assures you, it's not supposed to be.This book is hardly my favorite. Its frequent subject changes and lack of consistency remind me more of Bukowski's poetry than his prose, though that's hardly a criticism. Notes is a good sampling of the man's abilities. It's got his autobiography, fictions, absurdities, and profoundities all lined up in a row. It doesn't disappoint.
What do You think about Notes Of A Dirty Old Man (2015)?
i read this first and now i think maybe i shouldntve (can i do that?), becasue i'm now reading post office and he expanded on some of the articles in here so i feel like i've cheated and saw the preview to his life. anyway, i like him, he's simple and very very dirty, which i've slowly come to realize is what i must like because i keep reading these types of books. it was a perfect read during the school year because i didnt have to spend much time on any one story. if youre only gonna read one bukowski book then this would be it, if not you should probably start on something else first.
—Becca Loo
Bukowksi worked well when given every writers dream: carte blanche to write whatever he felt like writing, only to have it reproduced by the LA FREE PRESS and on the streets in a week, being read by thousands. Bukowski himself writes of the magical feeling of having the freedom to write whatever he wanted and the sudden notoriety he aquired with his new exposure. This collection of stories, as opposed to the ones collected elsewhere, show him still experimenting with a variety of forms and these stories contain a marked sense of surrealism and a even a polemical political bent, something which Bukowski usually had little stomach for; he gets in a few good ones at the expense of the false prophets of the 60's countercultural scene, a much needed antidote to the disgusting self-mythologizing that has always accompanied the free-love generation.
—Raegan Butcher
I really don't get what makes Bukowski so profound. Notes of a Dirty Old Man is the ramblings of a drunk and dirty gambler, always looking for his next drink or screw. Bukowski's writing is called Dirty Realism. That pretty much sums this particular book up. This book is a collection of little snippets of stories, based on Bukowski's life. He has no goals or aspirations. He barely works. The only thing he seems to have going for him is a large penis, but in my opinion, he's so dirty, smelly, and disgusting that I wouldn't touch it with my enemy's vagina, just so I could ask her how he was.It turns out he produced a shit-load (an appropriate term) of work. Well, I am not sure I want to read much more of it. I feel like I could give any local homeless drunk in North Hollywood a typewriter and some paper and he would come up with similar stories. So maybe Bukowski is profound because he was the first to write in this kind of voice. Maybe, he is seen as an anti-hero or an outsider. That's just not enough for me.
—Dania
