Charles Bukowski. Women

Henri Chinaski, the alter ego of Charles Bukowski, is quoted to introduce the novel: Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman. So far the reader seems to be prepared to face a novel called Women, a challenge to spell all the prejudices of the chauvinism of the seventies. Bukowski and women! That decades ago sounded like a collection of attributes which could be posted on a blacklist of political correctness nowadays.

Of course there is a woven texture of hundreds of episodes, mostly playing in Los Angeles, where the author Henri Chinaski is living in a cheap flat in an impoverished neighbourhood. Although far in his fifties, mostly drunk and in a shape of low attractiveness, he is a target to all kind of women. They like to become acquainted with the enfant terrible of known writers. They do everything to come close to him, very close. And they accept his filthy appearance and do not mind sharing his bed because they want to tell that they know the famous author intimately. That does not sound pleasant at all but the reader has to ask himself whether it is the nasty character of Bukowski or a corruptness of the women involved.

There are two aspects of the book that make it worth reading again in the 21st century. One is the psychological precision with which Bukowski is describing his famous readings. He knows exactly what the crowd expects and how far he can go. They always wanted, he quotes Henri Chinaski, that I´ll eat my own shit. But he knew how much he was allowed to drink and when the nonsense had to stop. Despite of all shock ritual they wanted to take home some esthetical value or political sense, because they had paid and wanted to consider life from a non affirmative point of view.

Secondly Bukowski succeeds again in observing and analysing his surroundings in a political, sociological and psychological way. It is a rare quality of writing throwing in deep analytical insights in such a laconic way. And he identifies some sociological biotopes like an environmentalist that one has to laugh deep heartedly considering their further development.

Women is a timeless novel. Whether you believe it or not.