Charles Bukowski, Culture, Fascism and Public Libraries

by Iona Singh

Bukowski, exposing his youthful attraction to fascism in Ham On Rye stated that at the beginning of the Second World War it was the richer kids at his college who were the patriotic ones, the ones that dreamed of fighting the Germans. Kids from working-class and unemployed families had less protective feelings towards the USA. For them there was nothing much to defend and life would be identical, they felt, whether the Chinese, Russians or the Germans came to power.

  What comes across in Ham On Rye in the run up to these feelings, is the years of Bukowki's barren, sparse and painful life. Its everyday ugliness. The lack of affection and almost psychotic punishment from his parents dripping through to the unsightly neighbourhood, dreary lessons and bullying at school. None of which are successfully counteracted by puberty and the discovery of the pleasures of sex, because, so the author tells us, of his own "ugly" appearance. His acne, he says "boils" are "incredible". They cover his face and body. The trauma of hospital and sun lamp treatments do little to help, and make scarring.  The author, rejects advances from females, too proud to contradict his own self image of hideousness, that, so he believes, yields only pity. Available internet images of Bukowski show this to be somewhat the product of lack of confidence. The craggy handsome face and stylish dress are not really the same person the book refers to, but Bukowski is such a good writer, without even appearing to try. Like these great Americans he is so lacking in pretension and this ability enables us to walk around in the skin of the repellent nature of his world and self-image. This barren alienation within which he is submerged, to eke out his existence, where every moment is grated on nails and feels very raw. It bounds from every direction, home, street, school, family and friends, who are equally drowning.

  All of this leads to the chapter on the early war years and Bukowski's anti-social sympathy for fascism. He has many reasons why, while not excusing himself and being totally honest, but the main reason seems and feels like the back drop of his soreness. The ugliness, the hurt of everything around him. It is possible to see, one senses, why a young person in his particular situation is likely to be attracted to this. The result of his life. All the liberal speeches about defending "right" must go out the window because nothing has been "right" for him. Only pain, so he must exert pain on others; fascism.

  However Bukowski was saved. Things began to change for him the day he sauntered into the local library and started taking and trying books from the shelves, one by one, and finding all of them "flat". Dead words. Then he arrives at a woman: surname Lawrence. Hoping for the best, he tries it. Again just deadness. He returns the book to the shelf and runs his hand along to the next author, one with the same surname, and this time something happens. His life begins. This pleasure, delicious reading, beautiful books, with a light under the covers at night and his parents shouting at him "is that a light?" and "go to sleep". But this boys life had already begun to change. Within a month he had read all the available DH Lawrence and had moved on to Hemingway and from there to all kinds of literature. Finally the boy did not end up as a minor organiser for extreme right-wing local party politics, he became Charles Bukowski, doyen of alternative left, bar-fly poetics. A genius spanning the whole gamut that society has to offer, from working class employment and unemployment to the pinnacle of intellectual literature, new, modernist and progressive forms written without strain, with honesty, plainly put and totally fascinating.

  Yet so many others do not, did not and will not find literature or any other kind of culture. The good side of Capitalism, the positive fruits of its production are remote for them. No respite from the harshness of it all, just a continual pinching of flesh.
  It did not come easy to this guy either, he found books under his own steam. Of course the public library was accessible, but there is an argument as to why people need culture to be able to stand at a machine, sit at a typewriter or cash register or to write formulaic novels. Who needs art for that? as the Conservative Party in the UK seem to believe right at this moment.

  You need it because life without culture is the lights gone out. Public libraries saved Bukowski and so many others. If the sensual body is disenfranchised and excluded, if it is outside of culture, the result is hatred of the things that are stopping it. A hatred of the kind of liberal leftyness that fails to defend them from pseudo-superior and unreachable fake culture and curtails a supply of correct education for grasping the real thing.  Lumpen TV programmes cater and pander to this, teachers who have it in their mind and manners that such kids are no hopers.  Who note the hardship-to-come etched on their faces, listen to their accents and determine that they could never access culture, that they cannot relate to a DH Lawrence or Manet. The recipients sense this rebuttal and are deeply hurt. Some eventually begin to make trophies out of the rejection and display it. "Ok" they say " so my life's too hard to understand the finesse of culture is it? You think there's no chance or reason to educate me. Ok so lets push that to the limit and FUCK you!"

  The real truth must be known that any artist who produces anything worth while, any real culture, produces it from exactly the same hardship. This "you can't understand culture, you're from the wrong side of the tracks" is a piece of fascist creating policing. I know because I  have had it myself, from those who believe that stints of unemployment and occasional lack of resources keep me from really understanding. Then I know it is just ridiculous because my publishers like my understanding enough to make books out of it. So if it's hard for me, what's it going to be like for members of the working class? Its going to be that it produces fascism.

Iona Singh is author of Color, Facture, Art and Design published by Zero Books

http://www.zero-books.net/index.php?id=99&p=2350