I zipped through Ham on Rye, a semi-autobiographical, depressing but also somehow hopeful coming-of-age novel. It’s full of swears and sex (-ish; more like, longings for sex) and dysfunctional family shit but also full of razor-edged observations and truth-telling and other good shit.

Next up is the follow-up biography/novel: Factotum.

Also in (slow) progress is Essential Bukowski: Poetry so here’s a little nip of that:

“Small men rant at things

They cannot do.”

A quote from Factotum* is what got me started on this Bukowski reading spree.

Let us read it together and be glad for people who say the things we don’t even know we want to say. (For the record, I don’t not believe in God but I don’t readily accept the God formula and I don’t know, maybe that kind of amounts to the same thing? At least in terms of answering the big questions.)

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

And, amen. … Update: Finished → Factotum and Essential Bukowski: Poetry by Charles Bukowski

Good stuff, all of it. Messy, grimy, sometimes off-putting, sometimes enlightening. Still a big YES from me.

Quote is not actually from Factotum but from The Meaning of Life: Reflections in Words and Pictures on Why We Are Here