Charles Bukowski. Ham on Rye

Beside the well known reception as an obscene and scandalous underground writer, Charles Bukowski has also to be discovered as a precise sociological observer. In his dominant autobiographical piece Ham on Rye we can get a sharp picture not only of the adolescence of the literal alter ego Hank Chinaski but also of American west coast society during the great depression.

The reader gets involved in the seemingly profane stories of a young boy reaching the threshold of a grown-up man fighting acne, sexual desire, facing a father with his double bound morality, praying family, but hitting his wife and seducing one of his neighbours. The young Henry starts drinking, is straying through different suburbs of Los Angeles, better described as a Lost Angeles, watching girls he will never be able to afford, staring at youngsters from the upper middle class, cruising with their Chevrolets, Dodges and Buicks and teasing him for his way of dressing and his pimples. In a laconic voice we hear about the strength to take it and about the dark clouds of world politics which ought to be far away but were too near not to be concerned of.

We get an idea of how the depression was, economically, psychologically and culturally. Boredom seemed to be the only constant and stable currency of these years. Hank Chinaski, the young man blues in mind, starts to gain first experiences, sexually, alcoholically and literally. There is a strong determination to the attributes of the later life of Charles Bukowski which made him famous as an underground writer.

Ham on Rye is a very serious novel about the hardship of a young man under the palm trees of Los Angeles. It is breaking the belief in a good old time with every line. When Bukowski wrote Ham on Rye down he was already in his sixties. It took even him, the hard drinking cynical, decades to be in the shape to handle it emotionally. No doubt big fiction!