Customer Reviews

The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Most Beautiful Woman in Town challenges the reader. At times, Bukoswki seems to be asking, "How much can you take? How far can I go?" No question, he's at the top of his form as a writer here. The objections I have are not with his artistic skill, but with his choices in material. "The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, Calif.," is a disturbing tale of necrophilia. Bad enough. But "The Fiend" is perhaps the most repellent short story I have ever read--a morally repugnant tale of child rape. And after reading a biography of Bukowski, I discovered that the story was not simply a fictional take on sexual depravity, but a variation of an actual sexual fantasy Bukowski had. The author goes too far here. All writers must face their demons, and some do well to write about them. But what is so objectionable about the "The Fiend" is that Bukowski sets up the rape scene for a laugh. "The Fiend" is the largest stain on a very good writer's body of work. That said, this book contains some of Buk's best work, such as the title story, which might be the best introduction to Bukowski's short story style. Also great is "Life and Death in the Charity Ward," about Bukowski's near fatal drinking bout. If I had to recommend one short story of his, it would be "Most Beautiful" or "Life and Death." "Kid Stardust on the Porterhouse" is also great, a retelling of the half-day that Buk spent working at a slaughterhouse. Given the varying quality of this book, Bukowski fans might come away from it with mixed feelings.

Bukowski tends to, as far as I can tell, polarize readers something fierce. There are those who claim that he belongs among the highest pantheon of American writers for his no holds barred writings and ability to tell it like it is. Others will say that his stories aren't worth the paper they're printed on, full of trash writing and vulgarity, appealing to only the basest of emotions. While I don't think he's a literary genius, I certainly don't think his writing can be dismissed totally out of hand, at least not from the representative sample presented in this collection. Most of the stories focus on a male character, who may or may not be Bukowski, going about his day in some fashion, which will generally include drinking, picking up women or otherwise seeing whatever bizarre things lie at the edge of society. His style is deceptively simple, never flowery or ornate but somehow getting the point across anyway, at its best his words take on a Hemmingwayesque sparseness, the short declarative sentences forming a terse rhythm that gives them more resonance than you would otherwise think. Strangely enough a lot of those moments come at the end of a story, he's good at wrapping tales up, often finishing with a paragraph or two of sobering observation, capping it with some variation of a fatalistic, "well, whatever." At their heart the stories strike me as honest, they're rough and unadorned, but sincere all the same. The most honest ones may be the autobiographical-type tales, not knowing a whole lot about the man I can't tell how much is totally invented and how much was real but those ones (such as "Life and Death in the Charity Ward") have the ring of stark reality about them. He depicts life in the sideways corners, the people who hold the odd jobs, who need a drink to get through the day, the greasy squalor of it all, seen briefly admist the mess of neon lights and burnt out streetlamps, dirty apartments, sweaty desperate couplings, the hope of betting money at the race track and praying that this time, maybe, God willing, you might hit it big. Not huge, but just enough to live comfortably for just one more day. Bukowski depicts them, and by extension himself, unflinchingly and with equal parts contempt and sympathy. The people in his stories are just trying to live, the same as anyone else, and this is how they live. For all the vulgarity and whatnot, nothing in here really shocked me, even the most abrasive act is rendered somehow touching, either through his dry commentary or a dark bit of humor. Even "The Fiend", probably the most disturbing story in here, is balanced by the main character's fate at the end. This collection is by no means perfect, reading too many of these in a row could drive you mad, as a lot of it can strike you as variations on a theme. But read in small chunks, these stories act like the best kind of punk rock music, it says what it has to say and gets the heck out, with not a single word wasted. For those capable of stomaching what amounts to kicking over a rock in the forest and seeing what kind of slimy insects crawl out, this is probably worth checking out. For the rest, you may have to build up your tolerance in other places first.

I stumbled into City Lights Books in SF and they recommended Bukowski. Always skeptical of "artistic literary" types, I decided to pick out a book of short stories to entertain my MTV attention span. I was very delighted with Bukowski's stories. Some are very creative (eg. Swastika) and most are downright vulgar! Throw in a bit of tragedy and a ton of tasteless humor (6 inches and The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, CA comes to mind) and you've got an idea of Bukowski's work. At many times, I found myself laughing out loud (very unusual for me) with his stories. I will probably pick up the second part of his short story volume (Tales of Ordinary Madness) as well as Post Office. Mad immortal tales, indeed.

The merits of Charles Bukowski have been hotly debated, and no more thorough introduction to the debate is available than a quick perusal of the reviews on this site. Personally I can see both sides of the fence on this one. I love Bukowski, but the parallels between his faults and my own make me a sympathetic reader. Those who have their crap together and have no issues maintaining noble ideals might be a little less impressed (if not outright revolted).

Even with my own prejudices noted, I still have to admit that "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town" has a greater hit-to-miss ratio than other collections of his that I've read (ie. "Notes of a Dirty Old Man", "Tales of Ordinary Madness"). Those that point out that Bukowski's stories tend to be same old, same old have a point, but they fail to realize that these short shorts were written as columns for an underground magazine and not necessarily meant to be compiled between two covers of the same book. I imagine if read in the original context, as just one story amongst a magazine full of varying writers, the works would come across as less monotonous. I appreciate this context and as such have not docked any points for it, as I prefer to grade strictly on the writing (those who demur would be hard pressed to deny that it's standard critical procedure to evaluate a greatest hits album based on the strength of the individual tracks, and not necessarily how well they tie together - I'm merely following the same consistancy here).

As I stated, there are a handful of lame ducks on display here - hence the 4 stars, and honestly this ranks more like a three and a half if we're splitting hairs - but when Buke's on point his flippant portrayals of a perrenial loser forever masking his pain in drink, cheap women and steadfast boycotting of the rat race are more insightful than the lurid dime-store subject matter would lead one to believe. Occasionally Bukowski approaches poetry in his prose works but for the most part keeps his fiction fairly well grounded, if not in reality itself than at least easily interpreted fantasy and science fiction (as in the story where a fiendish lover feeds him beer which eventually shrinks him until he's a mere six inches tall). Ultimately most of these tales read like the fragmented, deadline-haunted morsels that they are, and though they have the advantage of easy consumption I personally would recommend getting acquainted with Bukowski through his poetry or novels first and then circling back once you've gotten a taste for him. There are several stories in which the women in his life acknowledge that Bukowski is an ugly man but love him anyway, finding something beautiful - even soulful - in his ugliness. This is as apt a metaphor as any for the value of his remorselessly grim underworld.

Check out the other review close to mine. What a bunch of gobbledygook. Dude, never slam an author with a review that is even muddier than the book you are slamming. First of all, what are "the issues we have judged to be important in good writing"?
Are you saying that to have any credibility, all authors must limit their work to seperation of church and state? And don't try to impress us with words like 'inchoate'. Nobody knows what that means. The reason you don't like Bukowski is because your writing is so much like his, except more pretentious. Maybe with a few drinks in you, you'd loosen up and make it as Bukowski imitator.

I majored in English Lit at Princeton. A couple of years later, I stumbled across Bukowski in a little expat bookstore in Prague and couldn't stop reading him. It galls me to think that I was never ONCE exposed to his work during my four years at Princeton, supposedly one of the "cream of the crop" American universities! What in the hell is up with THAT???

This man is brilliant, simply brilliant. Zero pretension and zero tediousness. Truth flows effortlessly from his pen: simple, raw, real, horrible, hilarious, and beautiful all at the same time. Yes he does miss almost as often as he hits home, and he could've used a more rigorous editor especially for his notoriously uneven poetry. However, if you consider that in baseball, a good hitter gets on base at least 30% of the time, Buke definitely is no slouch...I'd guesstimate him to be around a .400 and caution you that sometimes when he swings and misses he can go down really really ugly ("The Fiend" is an undeniably repulsive fantasy-story about child rape) but when he connects he can blow that sucker out of the park (the first story with the book's title, or "The Copulating Mermaid" or "Six Inches").

But maybe too politically incorrect for the ivory tower...

"The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Other Stories" is easily a better collection than "Tales of Ordinary Madness". The writing is careless and sloppy, a sort of third-rate Hemingway or Carson McCullers. Cliches and poorly constructed sentences abound. But one must admit that it has feeling. Occasionally a shimmer of brilliance can be made out among the dross. Bukowski's own experiences supply much of the material, a reminder, perhaps, of the guiding power of lived experience. Some stories are quite inspired, e.g. "Swastika", "The F**k Machine" and "The Best W**rehouse in Texas"; I've never laughed more than at one story, "All the Great Writers", a lively account of the foibles and vanities of men of letters. But still, I'd recommend Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer", for those who'd prefer to see similar material better handled.

Bukowski was a writer of porn for the literary world. He didn't mask the perverseness of his thoughts or pretend to be civil in the traditional sense, not to women, not to himself, not to his highly esteemed contemporaries. He chose to write what he thought and not hide behind the ribbons and bows of classic literature. Bukowski tried (or maybe not... vulgar charm) to give his landscape to his readers in all its ugly glory and succeeded brilliantly.

Choose your own moral to the story. This is a guy worth listening to. No burnt out college hacks here.

This is I belive Bukowski's best collection of short stories. it truely displays his insane genius that all his true fans love