Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was an influential American poet and novelist. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles. He is often mentioned as an influence by contemporary authors, and his style is frequently imitated. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually having more than fifty books in print. He is often remembered as "The Poet Laureate of Skid Row." and Richard Bratigan Trout Fishing In America--a literary school suited to Aaron's Dark Side of China, where babies are left in the intersection for adoption
Thanks for your comment, John. I've heard of Bukowski plenty, but haven't read much of him. If there is a dark side to my work, it is the product of what I carry with me. I have been told that my "battling the darkness," as I have called it, is a battle with something imaginary, nowhere to be found in the material world. Dismissing darkness because it is imaginary, I would respond to the learned man, is the way of forgetting, or innocence, or animality. Perhaps my world is gutted by time, shot through with dark rays, but it moves. I need motion to feel alive. Sunny people seem to me like airplane passengers: they feel still and sure in their cabin while hurtling at incredible speed just eight inches separate from death; they fall asleep. Perhaps in my Hamlet-like gloom I undervalue my fellow humans; perhaps the sunny-siders deny what mortals their fellow humans really are.
And what is wrong with a darkness that is imaginary rather than physical? Imagination is so fundamental to the human mind that it is taken for granted like breathing, except that breathing is measurable and so fits nicely into hospital procedures, for example, which are in turn quantified in terms of money. Without imagination we would have no tool to envision or make choices about the future, whether we are trying to figure out what to do about breakfast or plotting a life-long course. Yeah, I imagine that people will age and die and so on. I find that tonic, if dark.
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Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was an influential American poet and novelist. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles. He is often mentioned as an influence by contemporary authors, and his style is frequently imitated. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually having more than fifty books in print. He is often remembered as "The Poet Laureate of Skid Row." and Richard Bratigan Trout Fishing In America--a literary school suited to Aaron's Dark Side of China, where babies are left in the intersection for adoption
Thanks for your comment, John. I've heard of Bukowski plenty, but haven't read much of him. If there is a dark side to my work, it is the product of what I carry with me. I have been told that my "battling the darkness," as I have called it, is a battle with something imaginary, nowhere to be found in the material world. Dismissing darkness because it is imaginary, I would respond to the learned man, is the way of forgetting, or innocence, or animality. Perhaps my world is gutted by time, shot through with dark rays, but it moves. I need motion to feel alive. Sunny people seem to me like airplane passengers: they feel still and sure in their cabin while hurtling at incredible speed just eight inches separate from death; they fall asleep. Perhaps in my Hamlet-like gloom I undervalue my fellow humans; perhaps the sunny-siders deny what mortals their fellow humans really are.
And what is wrong with a darkness that is imaginary rather than physical? Imagination is so fundamental to the human mind that it is taken for granted like breathing, except that breathing is measurable and so fits nicely into hospital procedures, for example, which are in turn quantified in terms of money. Without imagination we would have no tool to envision or make choices about the future, whether we are trying to figure out what to do about breakfast or plotting a life-long course. Yeah, I imagine that people will age and die and so on. I find that tonic, if dark.
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