Customer Reviews

Women

5 star:		(81)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

as the first book of charles bukowski's that i ever read, "Women" holds a special place in my heart. it is an insane story of henry chinaski and his misunderstandings and communications with women. autobiographical to an extent, this book, and all of bukowski's, are special because they are so graphically and emotionally honest. no one else paints such candid portraits of the human psyche in its most degenerate and politically incorrect situations. no other author can put so much vulgarity into a work and make it sound as natural as bukowski does. everything and every word in his novels have a place and a meaning, making his writing style so refreshingly satisfying, that you can't help but to live vicariously through his beautiful insanity. "women" introduced me to this great american poet/novelist, and it is my belief that this book definitely makes for a proper introduction to his works.

I was inspired to reread Charles Bukowski's novel, "Women", (1975) after seeing the recent film documentary, "Bukowski: Born into This" which offers a compelling picture of "Buk's" life replete with interviews of Bukowski, his women, and friends.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was born in Germany but his family moved to the United States when he was three. He wandered around the country for some years living in cheap rooming houses and drinking. He worked as a laborer and for the post office for many years and wrote poems and stories in his spare time. His work gradually attracted a following and was published by Black Sparrow Press. He achieved substantial acclaim before his death and his work continues to be read. It is low-down, graphic, and visceral.

Bukowski's novel "Women" (1975), is told in the voice of a character called Henry Chinaski, as are many other Bukowski novels. The book is largely autobiographical, but the use of a fictitous narrator provides a certain distance from its author, and deliberately so. During the course of "Women", Chinaski remarks more than once how his (Chinaski's) character differs to some degree from the public perception. I find it useful to remember the tension between the fictional Chinaski and the actual Bukowski in reading Bukowski's novels.

"Women" begins when Chinaski is 50 years old and is lamenting his lengthy lack of a sexual relationship with a woman. This lack is soon remedied during the course of the novel. Much of the story consists of a recounting of Chinaski's encounters with many women, most of whom are much younger than he is. Some of these encounters are brief one night stands, others continue over a period of time. Sometimes the women appear with Chinaski, leave, and then come back. Many of the women seem, in the story, genuinely drawn to Chinaski. He meets many of them through the poetry readings he gave at colleges and bars after his work acquired noteriety. Chinaski himself seems attached to at least some of these women -- perhaps more so than he would have his reader believe.

The activities of the characters are simply, bluntly, and clearly described and will not appeal to all readers. There is a great deal of emphasis on sex, on excretory functions, on endless drinking, horseplaying, and some drug use. Some readers will also take offense at Chinaski/Bukowski's attitude towards women, focused as it is on physical appearance and sexual activity.

I found the book engagingly written with its in-your-face attitude. It is gritty and realistic and describes Chinaski and his east Hollywood environs well. Many of the scenes are funny and perceptive as Chinaski mocks himself and his life. There is sexual honesty in the book as well as Chinaski shows us his failures -- which are frequent due to his alcoholism -- as well as the women that get away.

The book shows a degree of reflectiveness that is easy to overlook on first reading. There are times when Chinaski enjoys and glorifies his life with his sexual conquests and drink but many passages in the book suggest second thoughts and feelings of guilt. Thus, in a passage near the end of the book, which I will expurgate and abridge, Chinaski says ( "Women" p.236)

"I walked away feeling worse and worse. ... I could certainly play some nasty, unreal games. What was my motive? Was I trying to get even for something. .... I tinkered with lives and souls as if they were my playthings. How could I call myself a man? ... The worst part of it was that I passed myself off for exactly what I wasn't -- a good man. I was able to enter people's lives because of their trust in me. I was doing my dirty work the easy way."

There is a great deal, then, of the cult figure Chinanski/Bukowski in this book but there is more than that. Bukowski may not be to everyone's liking and he should not be any reader's sole literary fare. But there is something in the books beyond the bluster, the self-pity, and the public image. "Women" is worth reading.

First off, this book will offend people. It will probably offend you. You need to be offended. You need to be shaken out of your complacency. You need to be smacked upside the head with the crude and vulgar beauty of Bukowski's life and prose. You should get an injection of his drunken, debauched lifestyle. You should read this book.

This is the first Bukowski novel that I have read, on a recommendation from a friend. The man has a way with words. A true Hemingway in the way he gives insightful and penetrating descriptions of people, but never actually tells you what they are thinking. He is able to paint a deep character profile of all the many women in his life with a little dialogue and some crazy actions. Some may find it degrading towards women, but I don't feel that it is. Sure, he is sometimes crude, sometimes angry, sometimes insulting towards women, but he is equally so towards himself. If anything, I feel he shows the tragic sexual immaturity of both women and men. While his lifestyle may be on the extreme, and something that most of us have never even gotten close to, he demonstrates things that anyone who has been in a relationship can identify with.

All in all, I don't think Bukowski was writing a book about relationships that people would identify with. That is far too cheesy and mid '90s flaky for him. I think this was more just a painful self-evisceration. I think he was tearing himself open, and laughing about it, and proudly showing off his darkest, and also his most beautiful, thoughts, actions, and emotions.

for a long time i've resisted reading bukowski becuase i sort of thought it might be a bit adolescent . How wrong can you be .This was superb honest and moving .A real account of real relationships and real existence. It's also very funny at points . The narrator chinski is unfailingly honest about himself and the live he leads which stops the book becoming a series of macho conquests .The women give as good as they get in the main and chinski comes across as less of an aggressor and more of a victim of his own desires (as men in real life generally are ) He also allows himself to be very vulnerable, which is what is missing from almost all literary novels .The authors have the technique down....but not the desire to show themselves in all their disgusting, faded ,glorious, human detail . After reading this i went on to read 'Factotum' , 'Love is a dog from hell and other poems' and 'Ham on rye'. All were quite superb ...particularly ' Ham on rye '. It's been a very long time since i've discovered a writer who makes me want to read book after book ..... and also effects the way you see life . You begin to understand through bukowski that the pain we all feel at times in life, is not some terrible thing fate has singled us out to suffer.... but is a part of life to be accepted. In cocnclusion, I'd give it 6 stars if i could.....

On "Californication," the Showtime series based on Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski and the litany of experiences recounted in "Women," David Duchovny plays Hank Moody. Hank is an L.A. based writer with a daughter, a difficult relationship with the girl's mother, and an endless succession of affairs with admirers, colleagues, and friends, often fueled as a result of alcohol and/or drug binges. Hank Chinaski also has a daughter, a difficult relationship with the girl's mother, an endless succession of affairs, and a taste for drugs and booze. The difference between Chinaski and Moody lies in Showtime's careful manipulation. Duchovny has the resources to make Hank handsome, charming, witty, and sympathetic even in his most careless moments. He lives well, in a beautiful bungalow in Venice, and maintains a passionate love for his daughter's mother which the viewer expects will ultimately lead him to his salvation.

Bukowski's Hank has the wit, but the comparison pretty much ends there. He is ugly, lives in small and squalid apartments, and is not averse to misogyny. In the midst of an affair with a belly dancer from Vancouver, he asserts his fondness for "Canadian bacon." Some sex scenes bear closer to resemblance to rape scenes. There is never a moment of a pause in these scenarios, never a sense of wrongness.

Bukowski's character is revolting and, in his depictions of his pustule-ridden skin, the greasy floors of his apartment, and his unrepentant addiction to sex with any and every woman who crosses his path, he expects our disgust. Unlike other reviewers, I found Chinaski's steady access to so many women quite implausible. Halfway through, the catalogue began to bore me, and most of the women bore little identity beyond their body parts.

He approaches some for the first time and, within minutes, they are in bed. He has little time for seduction or courting and most of these women seem grateful for the opportunity to lie with a poet. His tastes are varied: streetwalkers, professionals living in the Hollywood Hills, dilettantes, unstable pill freaks, and numerous nubile admirers. Only a few women are truly memorable. The first is Lydia Vance, a sculptor and aspiring poet who inspires love and fear in Chinaski due to her passion and, often times, uncontrollable rage and jealousy. Vance is based on Bukowski's true life romance with sculptor and aspiring poet Linda King who later described her affair with Bukowski as a "prolonged nervous breakdown."

There is Tammy, a pillhead with bipolar tendencies. There is the remote Laura, whom Chinaski calls "Katharine" due to her resemblance to Katharine Hepburn. And there is Sara, the owner of an organic restaurant whose grace and dedication finally force Chinaski to question his behavior.

What saves this novel, which could easily be characterized as self-indulgent, misogynistic, hostile, and rather proud of itself for having these qualities, is its lucidity about the ways in which we distract ourselves in an effort to avoid wondering what meaning our lives bear. At one point, Chinaski confronts that his drinking, womanizing, and writing are simply activities to occupy his time while he waits to die.

Bukowski's style is straightforward, sometimes even brusque. His dialogue is a treat, giving a true sense of hearing how people communicate and, often, cross wires. There is some redundancy, which one might chalk up to poor editing or unawareness but that is, of course, not the case. Instead, this motif assists the tone of the novel, in which little changes and never is there a promise that the narrator has learned anything about himself or anyone else.

Bukowski avoids the flourishes of his contemporaries and mentions some by name in "Women," often contributing a taste for their novels to those within a certain class and of a temperament which are anathema to him.

I liked the novel because it is honest, though I detest many of the things it is honest about. I like it because it never pretends to be anything more than it is: an account of a man who finally has it good and intends to enjoy it, for he has nothing to lose except life itself.

College Hill Bookstore, Brown University, Providence, RI. I'm a prospective student, visiting, waiting to meet my student host, feeling strange, feeling out of place, killing time. Bukowski jumps out at me from the bookshelf in the Poetry section. Women. I read three pages. I, world's biggest cheapskate and 16-year-old with a job that pays *less* than minimum wage, shell out $16 and walk out of the store with a quick step and a smile. I read it in a sandwich shop and felt like I was following my nutso ex-lover down dirty streets watching her walk away with my furniture. I got drunk. I had sex. I finished my sandwich. I've designed an independent study English class for myself just so I can read Bukowski. I feel like I understand women better now, and I *am* one.

There's Lydia, Lilly, April, Dee Dee, Nicole, Mindy, and Laura. Joannna, Tammie, Mercedes, Liza, and the two German girls who drop in unannounced: Hilda and Gertrude. There's Cassie, Debra, Jessie, Iris, Valerie, Valencia, Sara, and Tonya. They are students, pick-ups, groupies, trueloves, and casual encounters--the women of the title.

In the guise of his alter ego Henry Chinaski, Buk pukes 11 times (usually in the morning), doing much to deglamourize his often heroically-portrayed drinking. Most of these occur early on in the book, during the writing of Post Office, a time when it's been 4 years since he's been with a woman. The emphasis quickly shifts from regurgitation to penetration as the author meets Lydia at his first poetry reading and begins to make up for lost time.

Lydia draws him a diagram to illustrate the ins and outs of cunnilingus. At over 50, Bukowski is an eager student and plies his new skill 7 times throughout the book. By comparison, he himself is on the receiving end of oral pleasure this many times: 5.

F***s: 43. Most of them successful, although sometimes he is too drunk to get it up, falls asleep, or something intervenes. These scenes are more comic than erotic, related with the same deadpan wit and detachment used to describe opening a beer (which, unlike the f***s, are too numerous to count--along with the scotch, wine, whisky and weed).

Those are the numbers, provided as a service to you Bukowski scholars. For the wit, art, and humanity, read the story.

(Special thanks to Sarah, who read the book right after I did and compiled these statistics.)

WOMEN describes the life of Hank Chinaski, a fat, middle-aged, alcoholic poet who one character calls "the most unknown famous man I ever met." Thanks to his literary notoriety, Hank has become a sex object to women, who drink with him, have sex with him, and then get back to their lives. In my notes, I counted 19 women, most of them much younger, who bed Hank.

Bukowski succeeds in making each of Hank's lovers distinct. There's Lydia (Hank helps her feel greatness), DeeDee (positive and engaged in life until she attempts suicide), Nicole (a culture bitch), Mindy (beautiful but lousy in bed), and so on. But with each woman, Hank is exactly the same: he is celebrity alcoholic in pursuit of sex but also open to the special qualities in each woman. From this angle, the book is crude but entertaining erotica, both dismissive and sensitive to women, and extremely funny.

Usually, Bukowski writes in a laconic deadpan style that makes WOMEN a very fast read. I suppose it's not great literature, because Hank doesn't evolve and or have to make fundamental choices. Instead, WOMEN is closer to concise and hilarious fantasy. Still, there are occasional comments that clarify or add depth to the story. For example:

Page 174: "Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different... What a feast!"

Page 74: "Why always more women? What was I trying to do? New affairs were exciting but they were also hard work. The first kiss, the first f--k had some drama. People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves ...Was I trying to screw my way past death? By being with young girls did I hope I wouldn't grow old, feel old? I just didn't want to age badly, simply quit, be dead before death itself arrived."

Page 205: "Just living until you die is hard work."

Page 285: "There was so much sadness in everything, even when things worked out."

"Women" is author Charles Bukowski's semi-autobiographical novel that revolves around Henry Chinaski, a 50-something poet. Henry's finally beginning to experience some professional success, and he's milking it for all it's worth by indulging in alcohol, blowing his money at the track, and sleeping with as many women as he can get. I lost count of the number of women Henry has sex with in this book, but it's astronomically high, and every sexual encounter is described in very graphic detail. However, this isn't just a run-down of all the women Henry's been with. It's also an honest look at a life that's a lot less fulfilling than it may look on the outside, and a man who's actually a pretty sad case.

I enjoyed "Women," but not as much as I thought I would. This is the first Bukowski novel I've read, and I had very high expectations, but they weren't quite met. I love the author's writing style and Henry is a fantastic character, but he really doesn't seem to evolve much over the course of the novel, and things just got a bit monotonous after a while. Also, I had a hard time believing that a dirty old man like Henry could have all these beautiful women competing to be with him. Still, Bukowski is a very unique writer, and I was impressed enough by this book that I will definitely seek out more work by this author.

Funny and very offensive, "Women" was my introduction to Bukowski. Nowhere near as strong a work as "Post Office", "Factotum" or "Ham on Rye", but a fun read nevertheless. My wife's most hated book.