7/29/15 Charles Bukowski? (Book)

    I finally read one his collections.  This one was titled Notes From A Dirty Old Man.  I loved the title but it wasn't really dirty, unless you add in a man living on the streets moving from town to town.  It did not have hardly any "dirty" material as I was expecting.  I guess the tone would have been different, as the collections run from the 30s into the 1960's.
    Most of the stories have Bukowski involved, either loved or hated in the storyline, and mostly always drinking some cheap alcohol from a paper sack.  He has hookers and deviant women come in and out of his life, but they always seem temporary.  His writing style does leave open a measure of humor, for example when he has an escapade with a 300lb. woman.  He goes into great deal how the waves of ecstacy coming off her legs keep pushing him away but like a man at war with a beast he keeps getting back on.  Eventually, success, she orgasms which no other mere mortals have been able to do, but at the cost of breaking all four legs on his bed.
    Each story is independent and thus makes for the entire book to be a quick read.  There are no deep thoughts, just a drunk, usually in the ghetto, trying to get through life by doing the absolute minimum and still managing to screw it up.  He has a gal supporting him at one point, and although he is trying to screw the hot professional stripper that lives next door, he actually screws the portly lady that lives behind him.  His gal finds out and thus kicks him out.
In another story, he lands in a new town and a man offers him a job paying him $13 a night to watch the register in a taxicab company.  I assume this was enough to live off of.  But a little time goes by and slowly and surely he starts attracting the neighborhood whores that work in the brothels nearby.  He likes surrounding himself and the imagery of them dancing and partying with him, the best one sitting on his lap every night.  Until the boss finds out, then he gets fired.
    He seems to be an original and among his better quotes, I liked:

 

"Find what you Love, and let it kill you."

 

"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts,

while the stupid ones are full of confidence."

 

"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire."