Ham On Rye (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

About the Author

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press (May 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876855575
• ISBN-13: 978-0876855577
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (135 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #343,159 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bukowski at his best!, November 29, 1999

By	Eric Petersen (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Most fans of the late, great Charles Bukowski, myself included, list Ham On Rye as their favorite Bukowski novel - and rightfully so. This novel is actually a thinly-veiled autobiography of the man we knew and loved as "The Bard of Booze and Broads." We see through the eyes of young Henry Chinaski as he comes of age in Depression-era America, the product of a dysfunctional and physically abusive household. From his early childhood as a desperately lonely, yet antisocial little boy to his adolescence (where he struggles with crippling acne and develops a love of literature), we see the genesis of a great writer. Bukowski pulls no punches (no pun intended) in his descriptions of abuse suffered at the hands of his father, a coldhearted, arrogant, sadistic SOB. The reader is drawn in to Bukowski's passionate determination to be the exact opposite of what proper society tries to mold its youth into. A powerful and heartbreaking read. Great work, Buk! R.I.P - you will be missed!

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Growing up Chinaski, August 28, 2006

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have been returning to the work of Charles Bukowski (1920 -- 1994) after reading his novel "Factotum" and watching the movie based upon it. Bukowski's novel "Ham on Rye" (1982) is a coming-of age novel in that it tells the story of Bukowski's protagonist, Henry Chinaski, from his birth to his young manhood, ending with the attack on Pearl Harbor. ("Factotum", written in 1978 covers the next period of Chinaski's life, after he has been rejected for the draft and wanders from city to city in search of work.) Chinaski is based loosely on Bukowski's own life; but "Ham on Rye" and Bukowski's other novels are, after all, works of fiction and should be read as such.

The scene of "Ham on Rye" is Los Angeles during the Great Depression, particularly the lower middle-class homes in which Chinaski grows up, as families struggle to survive and to escape from poverty. Bukowski is at his best in describing dingy homes, streets, schools, and desperate people.

But "Ham on Rye" is a coming-of-age book told with irony and twists. It seemingly mocks the story of self-discovery and self-awakening common to these distinctively American books, but in the end I think it follows the pattern of a coming-of-age story in spite of itself. Most American coming-of-age books recount the life of a young person and end when that person comes to some crisis which he meets and, thus, attains a degree of understanding of himself which he carries through life. Bukowski's book tells the story of an unhappy childhood, as Chinaski is subjected to an overbearing father and frequent beatings. In addition, as an early adolescent, Chinaski develops a terrible case of acne which exacerbates his tendency to aloneness as well as his anger and rebeliousness. After graduating from high school, Chinaski loses a menial job, enrolls in a Junior College, and begins to drink heavily. He is well on the way to a life of alcoholism, fighting, wandering, and gambling that is detailed in chronologically later novels of Chinaski's life, such as "Factotum" or "Women".

Yet for all its rawness and Chinaski's sense of failure and purposelessness, the book conveys a sense of promise. The book shows a young Chinaski forming the desire to be a writer, and beginning to work at his craft and respond to his experiences in a manner that, years later, would result in "Ham on Rye" and in Bukowski's other works of fiction and poetry. Some of the best moments in "Ham on Rye" show the adolescent Chinaski sitting alone in the Los Angeles Public Library and ultimately discovering authors, including D.H. Lawrence, Upton Sinclair, and Sinclair Lewis, who speak to him. As had many before him, Chinaski learns that projecting oneself into artistic creation offers a form of release from the difficulties of everyday life. Chinaski writes: "Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you." (p. 152) These words reflect the theme of "Ham on Rye" and, I think, of Bukowski's work as a whole.

Similarly while suffering from his acute acne, Chinaski develops a character a WW I pilot named Baron Von Himmlen, and writes stories of his imagined adventures. Chinaski writes: "it made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be". (p. 168)

"Ham and Rye" is the story of how a young man found himself in adulthood leading a life of alcoholism, poverty, and loneliness, with no ambition and seemingly few prospects. The book is full of adolescent sexual frustration, dysfunctional families, rawness, vulgarity, and failure. It also includes some funny scenes. The story is told in a sharp, crude, no-nonsense style. But together with all the outward failure and the shocking scenes, we see a young Chinaski in the process of attaining his dream and gaining victory over himself after all. In spite of the dead-end vicissitudes of his life, Henry Chinaski perseveres and gradually brings his experiences alive and learns to make something worthwhile of his existence. He learns to reflect upon himself and his life and to describe them without cant or mercy. Henry Chinaski becomes a writer.

Robin Friedman

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HAM ON RYE, The American DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN, September 19, 1998

By A Customer

In all of Bukowski's work there is a constant search for truth and freedom. With every breath that Bukowski takes he is locked in a fevered struggle with the forces around him that contiually attempt to make him walk the path of the common man. Bukowski sees this as nothing more than falling into a lock step towards certain death. Though he portrays himself as a repulsive type of human being, he is able to convince us that it is the world around him that is far more repulsive. In Ham On Rye, we are lead through the more meaningful chapters of Bukowski's childhood and early adulthood. There are very few pieces of literature that reaches readers with more honesty. As we read Bukowski we may at one moment feel relieved that we do not have to live his life, but in the next moment, are envious of the freedom in which he enjoys. Ham On Rye is one of those extremely rare pieces of fiction that allows a great work of art to simply flow into us. Reading Ham On Rye is simply effortless. It is almost as if it passes directly into us. This is, without a doubt, the most important American novel of the last quarter century. How can the readers of great literature wonder, in horrific despair, with the passing of Salinger, Miller and Bukowski, if a truly great writer will appear in our lifetimes. I, for one, have very little hope, but continue to stand vigilant