Customer Reviews

Charles Bukowski

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With so many works on the life of Bukowski out there, I was skeptical about this new biography. However, I have read many other good bios by Miles, and was looking forward to this one. It did not leave me disappointed.

The best way to get to know Bukowski is through his numerous autobiographical writings, but I enjoyed this independent take on his life. Unlike Cherkovski's biography of Buk, this book is written by someone who was not intimately familiar with the man. That, in and of itself, was refreshing. Miles is a competent biographer, and at times his resourcefulness for following through with sources and information really come through in the book. The reward for the reader is some new information on Buk that I hadn't read before elsewhere.

The book does have some weaknesses. This book does pull from most of the expected sources a Buk reader would expect, like "Ham on Rye" and interviews, so some of it is repetitious. But Bukowski teetered on the edge of vagrancy most of his life, so you can imagine tracking down a paper trail of facts after his death is not an easy task. Also, at times the author, I think, makes some stretches in his conclusions. But on the whole I thought it was a fresh and balanced look at the life of Bukowski. I think that this will become the preferred biography of Buk over the Cherkovski biography.

I'm a huge Bukowski fan. This is the worst biography about Bukowski that I've read.

There were a few interesting things that were uncovered through research - histories of some of Buk's women, for example. Unfortunately, there were far too many case where the author jumps around in time, for no good reason. He'll be talking about Bukowski publishing a book in the 70s and then jump back and have a few sentences about 66 when Bukowski did something strange when he was drunk. C'mon! If there were good dramatic reason for it (the Godfather films, for example) I'm all for it. Here is just seems sloppy.

This is an example of how the author figures out if something really happened or not (I'm paraphrasing here): "Bukowski wrote about this a few different times, so it must be at least somewhat true!" Thanks pal, I could've figured that one out! The author does this repeatedly and it gets tiring. Sometimes, the author tracks down someone who was actually there, but not often.

I really only gave this 2 stars because it's about BUKOWSKI, which is welcome. I could even tolerate the weird "proving" of events. But I cannot stand the jumping around, it's distracting. Peace.

I've read all of Bukowski's prose and about a third of his poetry, as well as a number of biographical works on Buk. Miles' bio has its moments, but it is nowhere near a definitive examination, or even record, of Charles Bukowski's life. The pluses are in the sections where Miles relates Buk to other writers, and to a lesser degree, where he enumerates Buk's influences, although these efforts do not go far enough in showing specific connections. Anyone who has read Bukowski has a fair sense of his life, since the work is so autobiographical. Simply laying out the events in Buk's life is a little redundant. That's where Miles' interpretation and correlation to literature and the wider world pay dividends. Even more would have been better.

The troubling parts are the sloppiness, unevenness, and self-contradiction. Names are misspelled (Crotti/Crotty), words misused, and details presented inconsistently. Perhaps these are oversights that slip into any work of a certain length. If so, an editor could easily have tidied up these errors. Left to stand, they raise questions about the accuracy of the work.

It isn't hard to tell which parts of the story Miles enjoyed writing. Bukowski's youth was not one of them, which gets the book off to a sluggish start. By the time Buk hits the road, Miles starts having more fun, and his prose becomes more lively and fluid.

For the life of him, however, Miles simply can't decide whether Buk's autobiographical writing is fifty percent, seventy-five percent, ninety, or ninety-five percent fact, with the remaining percentage embellishment. He give all four percentages. His better calls come when he addresses the factuality of individual works or incidents.

Worst of all is Miles' flat and repeated assertion that Bukowski was a misogynist. No argument, the guy was damaged where relations with other humans was concerned. Neither his father nor his mother offered healthy models for his social development. Buk's abnegation of social contact was a barometer of his inadequacy in relating to other people as much as it was his intellectual contempt for the trivialities of human existence. The late initiation of sexual relations with women and the very late blossoming of his sex life -- both well documented by Miles -- are the key indicators of both Buk's emotional disadvantages and his lifelong growth in relating to women. For all Buk's whores and one-night stands, he maintained long relationships with Jane Cooney Baker and Linda King. In later life, he settled down with Linda Beighle. Despite their differences, the nasty fights, and numerous break-ups, Buk finally matured enough to overcome his own debilities and make a home life with one woman. Not a perfect man by any means, but one who at least faced his deficiencies and grew.

MIles gives the end of Bukowski's life short shrift, especially the involvement with Buddhism. Further, John Martin, Bukowski's publisher and sustainer, doesn't get as much attention as deserved. If Bukowski's women went through a lot, what did poor Mr. Martin, a Christian Scientist and teetotaler, endure?

In sum, this bio reads something like a fan's blog. It's not that Miles knows nothing about Bukowski. He appears to have read and enjoyed the bulk of Buk's catalog. Rather it appears he was willing to do enough to get by but not enough to create a polished and definitive work. Looking at his other titles, Mr. Miles appears to a writer looking for topics that sell books more than a writer out to create works of substance.

I'm a fan of Bukowski's work, so I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, I gave up on it after the first 200 pages. The events of his life are so interesting and definitely worth reading about, but this biographer's writing style was repetitive and dull. Every page is essentially: "Bukowski made this statement in (insert the name of an interview or Bukowski book here), so it must have happened like this....."
I'm sure there are much better Bukowski bios out there. Don't waste your money on this one.

Barry Miles has covered a lot of ground in his life. Someone should wrtie a book about him. But when it comes to Bukowski I am in a strange position. I corresponded with him in a minor way. (He wrote me 20 times, I wrote him about 55) I own a bookstore in San Francisco where I've gotten to know many people whom Bukowski knew well. Neeli Cherkovski works down the street at New College. Harold Norse lives on my block and will be turning 90 in two weeks. John Bryan is a regular fixture. Jack Micheline painted the back room. Linda King sculped the head of A.D. Winans in my store. But my point being that unless you know better it is very very difficult to know if a biographer is on target. You might get distracted by purely trivial things...you might like the writing and decide it also must be acurate. Often it is not. But look the essence is did he fairly and acurately capture the man? For me Barry Miles book is definately the best. For instance he covers Bukowsk's bad habit of hatcheting old freinds. Like Jon Webb and John Bryan. He gets so many things so right. Yes he slips a bit now and then but I kept reading this biography and marveled at how he nailed one thing after another. Jesus he must have read 10,000 Bukowski letters carefully. Well, ok, he didn't mention how I wrote Bukowski and convienced him to buy a MacIntosh computer. Which I did. I forgive him. But Miles has written an excellent work well worth buying.

After reading many books by Bukowski i don't get a lot more than what i've already gleened time and again from all the others by and about him. Its time to pack my bags with my insights and move on to the next rebel. Who really cares if Bukowski did or didn't do every last one of the things he's was said to have done or said he did himself. He surely did enough of the down and out to have authenticity but after awhile the experiences read pretty much like a who's who of the skid - a rebel who got raucously drunk a lot doing the lowlife, the race track and the occasional whore. You can find that stuff going on in most any large city. The only difference is he wrote about it. I think its great he laid down those images and descriptions of screwed up society so well but a lot of it seems stretched in my opinion for the stories and the poems. The skid life is no picnic and a whole lot more miserable and painful in my opinion than he depicts. I spent my share of time on the skid and it was lot worse than frat boy fantasies of getting drunk and beaten up and puking your guts out daily catching the clap and hanging tough for that next novel. I feel he romanticized that life in his way reporting on insights at the bottom of the world like some zen troubadour of victimization. At times he seems to me like some random malcontent who had a tough life and had a knack for putting it on paper but with no answers except maybe to avoid a lot of his mistakes. I feel he was lucky to be published by those seeking to plow new lowlands for the public's gold. I really believe a lot of people overrate him because his legacy offers hope for success to even the most pathetic aspirant at the bottom of the barrel. Steve