Henry Charles Bukowski ( / b uː ˈ k aʊ s k i / boo- KOW -skee ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski , German: [ ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈkaʁl buˈkɔfski ] ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic environment of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski's work focuses on the everyday lives of poor Americans, the process of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the challenges of work.
The FBI kept a file on him because of his column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" in the underground newspaper Open City.
Bukowski published his work in many small literary magazines and with small publishers starting in the early 1940s and continuing through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during his career. These included "Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window," published by his friend and fellow poet Charles Potts, and "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame." His poems and stories were later collected and published by John Martin's Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins / Ecco Press). A reviewer noted, "Bukowski remained the king of the underground because of his unusual behavior and performances that made him seem like a clown, showing his respect for the small press editors who first supported his work."
Time magazine called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife." Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal is that he combines the honesty of a confessional poet with the boldness of a pulp-fiction hero."
During his lifetime, Bukowski received little attention from academic critics in the United States but was more widely appreciated in Western Europe, especially in the United Kingdom and Germany, where he was born. Since his death in March 1994, many articles and books have been written about his life and work.
Life and career
Charles Bukowski was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Prussia, which was part of Germany during the Weimar period. His father was Heinrich (Henry) Bukowski, an American of German heritage who served in the U.S. Army after World War I and stayed in Germany after his military service. His mother was Katharina (née Fett). His paternal grandfather, Leonard Bukowski, moved to the United States from Imperial Germany in the 1880s. In Cleveland, Ohio, Leonard met Emilie Krause, an ethnic German who had moved from Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). They married and settled in Pasadena, California, where Leonard worked as a successful carpenter. The couple had four children, including Heinrich (Henry), Charles Bukowski’s father. His mother, Katharina Bukowski, was the daughter of Wilhelm Fett and Nannette Israel. The name Israel is common among Catholics in the Eifel region. Bukowski believed his paternal ancestors moved from Poland to Germany around 1780, as "Bukowski" is a Polish last name. As far back as he could trace, his entire family was German.
Bukowski’s parents met in Andernach after World War I. His father was a German-American sergeant in the U.S. Army serving in Germany after the empire’s defeat in 1918. He had a relationship with Katharina, a German friend’s sister, and she became pregnant. Bukowski often claimed to be born out of wedlock, but records in Andernach show his parents married one month before his birth.
Afterward, Bukowski’s father became a building contractor and planned to make money after the war. After two years, the family moved to Pfaffendorf (now part of Koblenz). However, because Germany struggled with high costs after the war, the economy was weak, and inflation was high. His father could not support the family and decided to move to the United States. On April 18, 1923, they sailed from Bremerhaven to Baltimore, Maryland, where they settled.
Bukowski’s family moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, in 1930. His father often had no job. In his book Ham on Rye, Bukowski wrote that his father was abusive, both physically and mentally, and hit him for small reasons. He later told an interviewer that his father beat him with a razor strop three times a week from ages six to 11. He said this helped his writing, as it taught him about pain that was not deserved.
Bukowski spoke English with a strong German accent and was teased with the nickname "Heini," a German version of Heinrich, during his childhood. He was shy and avoided social interactions, a problem made worse during his teen years by severe acne. Other children mocked his accent and the clothes his parents made him wear. The Great Depression made him angry and influenced much of his writing.
In his early teen years, Bukowski had a realization when his friend William "Baldy" Mullinax introduced him to alcohol. He later wrote that alcohol helped him cope with life. Bukowski attended Susan Miller Dorsey High School for one year before moving to Los Angeles High School. After graduating in 1939, he studied art, journalism, and literature at Los Angeles City College for two years before leaving when World War II began. He then moved to New York City to work as a low-income laborer, hoping to become a writer.
On July 22, 1944, during the war, Bukowski was arrested in Philadelphia by FBI agents for possibly avoiding the military draft. At the time, many Germans and German-Americans were suspected of being disloyal, and his German birth troubled the authorities. He was held for 17 days in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison. Sixteen days later, he failed a psychological test during a required military physical and was classified as 4-F (unfit for military service).
When Bukowski was 23 (March–April 1944), his short story "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" was published in Story magazine. Two years later, another short story, "20 Tanks from Kasseldown," was published by Black Sun Press in Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly. Frustrated by the difficulty of getting published, Bukowski stopped writing for nearly a decade, a time he called a "ten-year drunk." These years inspired his later stories, and he wrote about his life using a fictional character named Henry Chinaski.
During this time, Bukowski lived in Los Angeles, worked briefly at a pickle factory, and spent time traveling across the U.S., working odd jobs and staying in cheap hotels. In the early 1950s, he worked as a temporary letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office in Los Angeles but quit before completing three years of service.
In spring 1954, Bukowski was treated for a life-threatening stomach ulcer. After leaving the hospital, he began writing poetry. The next year, he married Barbara Frye, a poet from Texas, but they divorced in 1958. After the divorce, he drank heavily and continued writing poetry.
Several of Bukowski’s poems were published in the late 1950s in Gallows, a small poetry magazine. Another magazine, Nomad, published some of his early work. In 1959, Nomad featured two of his poems. A year later, it published one of his famous essays, Manifesto: A Call for Our Own Critics.
By 1960, Bukowski returned to the U.S. Post Office in Los Angeles and worked as a letter filing clerk for over a decade. In 1962, he was deeply upset by the death of Jane Cooney Baker, his first serious girlfriend. He wrote poems and stories about her death.
In 1960, E.V. Griffith, editor of Hearse Press, published Bukowski’s first separate work, a poem titled "His Wife, the Painter." Later that year, Hearse Press published his first chapbook of poems, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail. These works were part of a collection called *
Writing
Writers such as John Fante, Knut Hamsun, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Du Fu Li Bai, and James Thurber were influences on Bukowski's writing.
Bukowski often said Los Angeles was his favorite subject. In a 1974 interview, he explained, "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every person on the street corner. You know the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are. Since I was raised in L.A., I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I've had time to learn this city. I can't see any other place than L.A."
Bukowski performed live readings of his works, starting in 1962 on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles. These events became more frequent during the 1970s. Drinking was often part of these readings, along with lively exchanges with the audience. Bukowski also showed kindness; for example, after a sold-out show at Amazingrace Coffeehouse in Evanston, Illinois, on November 18, 1975, he signed and illustrated over 100 copies of his poem "Winter," published by No Mountains Poetry Project. By the late 1970s, Bukowski earned enough money to stop performing live readings.
One critic described Bukowski's fiction as "a detailed depiction of a certain taboo male fantasy: the uninhibited bachelor, slobby, anti-social, and utterly free," an image he tried to live up to through energetic public poetry readings and informal behavior at parties. Some critics and commentators also said Bukowski was a cynic, as a man and a writer. Bukowski denied being a cynic, saying, "I've always been accused of being a cynic. I think cynicism is sour grapes. I think cynicism is a weakness."
More than half of Bukowski's collections were published after his death. These posthumous collections have been described as "John Martinized," meaning the poems were heavily edited in ways not present during Bukowski's lifetime. For example, the popular poem "Roll the Dice" (when compared to its original version, "What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire") has themes such as hell and alcoholism removed. The editing also changed lines from "against total rejection and the highest of odds" to "despite rejection and the worst odds."