Charles Bukowski Passionate Madman
LiveAuctionTalk.com: by Rosemary McKittrick
Photo courtesy of PBA Galleries.
As a writer Charles Bukowski opened a vein and poured his lifeblood into more than 45 books of poetry and prose, plus hundreds of magazine articles. His life makes for a great story.
Charles saw himself as the perpetual underdog who managed to rise up soiled but still swinging. He claimed the majority of the wild experiences he wrote about actually happened to him in life.
He published his first story when he was 24 and began writing poetry at the age of 35.
“I have no desire to save anybody. . . . So, these are my readers, you see? They buy my books—the defeated, the demented and the damned—and I am proud of it.”
Nothing was off-limits in Bukowski’s writing. His first short stories were published in the 1940s and for a 10-year period after that he lived on the road as a broke, alcoholic drifter.
His craving for beer, women and recognition goes without saying. He was the self-proclaimed dirty old man of American letters who laid it all out on paper.
Sexual imagery filled his writings. He wrote about what he called the bums and low-life losers who crossed his path. He shined a light on the lives some would prefer not to even know about. In 1986, “Time” called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife."
He returned to LA in 1955, the city where he was raised and lived for over 50 years and began publishing poetry with violent images highlighting what he saw as a broken society.
Intrigued by poets Walt Whitman and Robinson Jeffers Charles decided poetry, short stories and fiction were the shortest, sweetest and easiest way to say what he wanted to say. His favorite subject matter included rooming house life, saloon life, and eager women.
From Hemingway he learned to write in a straight-forward way with lots of dialogue.
“I have no desire to save anybody. . . . So, these are my readers, you see? They buy my books—the defeated, the demented and the damned—and I am proud of it,” he said.
Nervous to the point of sickness on stage he sometimes drank from a flask of vodka and orange to keep his hands from trembling.
One editor referred to him as a “passionate madman.” A cocktail of booze and Valium slowed Charles down but never stopped him. He kept pouring out his semiautobiographical fiction and poetry highlighting the mystery and misery of life.
He worked as a mail handler for a time and his 1971 novel “Post Office” even made the repetitive job of sorting mail interesting to readers.
“I was concerned with pace, a briskness of style which would not lie and which would still keep the readers awake while I was getting at what I wanted to say,” he said.
It was as much his personality as it was his writing that attracted attention. Authors like short story writer and poet Raymond Carver liked to write about him. Carver met Charles at a university reading in California.
Charles was a cult hero and by the time of his death was one of the best-known, underground American writers.
On July 14, 2022, PBA Galleries featured a selection of Charles’ books in its Fine Literature sale.
Here are some current values.
Charles Bukowski
Portrait Photo; original, by Richard Robinson; black-and-white; signed; circa 1979; 9½ inches by 7½ inches; signed; $438.
Book; Factotum; first edition; Black Sparrow Press; Bukowski’s original signed abstract painting inserted in front ; 17 of 75; signed; 1975; $2,500.
Book; The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills; first edition; Noel Young printer; Bukowski’s original painting included; 21of 50; signed; Noel Young printer; signed; 1969; $2,813.
Book; Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail; first edition of Bukowski’s first book; 1 of 200; inscribed; 1963; $11,250.
