My readers know that one of my top authors is charles bukowski (Andernach 1920-California 1994). I have been a faithful reader of the ‘indecent old man’ since I read his books ‘The path of the loser’, ‘The fucking machine’, ‘Writings of an indecent old man’ and ‘Erections, ejaculations, exhibitions’. And I burst out laughing at his novels ‘Postman’, ‘Factotum’ and my favorite, ‘Mujeres’.
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‘Hank’ himself, as his friends called him, defined the universe of his literature: ‘I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken destinies. I also like vile women, drunk bitches, with wrinkled, saggy stockings, and faces smeared with cheap makeup. I like perverts more than saints. I feel good among outcasts because I am an outcast. I don’t like laws, nor morals, religions or rules. I don’t like being modeled by society’.
Diving through old bibliography about the teacher, I came across a little-known interview from 1987, published in the magazine ‘Crisis’. The author is the Chilean novelist Poli Délano. The Latin American appeared at the legendary home of the North American: “I arrived at the Bukowskis’ house in San Pedro (facing the California sea) with the poet David Valjalo, a mutual friend who had made the appointment. It was around nine at night and the beautiful Linda Lee, his partner (later his wife and his widow), centuries younger, smiling, jovial and fond of natural foods, opened the door for us.
-They have accused you of being a sexist, I tell him.
The answer he gave me could be the same as that given by the ‘great poet’ of his story to his young interviewer, when he asks what he thinks about women’s liberation: ‘As soon as they are willing to wash the car, push the plow, chase to the two guys who just held up the liquor store or cleaned out sewers, as soon as they’re ready to get their tits shot off in the army, I’ll be ready to stay home and do the dishes and be bored picking up carpet lint’.
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‘Mujeres’ is a delicious novel, in which the protagonist narrates his erotic life from the age of fifty, with a rather crude realism that at times could be confused with pornography. Agile, funny, ruthless, he is delivering step by step a veritable gallery of female characters that attempt a little violently against feminist postulates. “I get accused a lot because of my favorite characters,” Bukowski told me that night. ‘If I paint a woman who is garbage, the feminists pounce on me, while if I paint a man who is garbage, they say nothing to me.’
Bukowski against feminists
Feminists were definitely at ‘war’ against him, but the novelist responded by paraphrasing Rhett Butler’s (Clarke Gable) famous phrase in ‘Gone with the Wind’: ‘I don’t give a damn’. The author of ‘Hollywood’ lit the fire when he wrote in his book ‘Wanted for a woman’ (1973): ‘There is something out of control in me, I think too much about sex. When I see a woman I always imagine her in bed with me. It’s an interesting way to kill time at airports’.
There are not few who branded the American author as a misogynist. But the Spanish singer-songwriter Coque Malla uploaded a photograph of the writer to his Instagram accompanied by the following phrase: ‘Charles Bukowski: rude, lawless, drunk, womanizer and immoral. All a man’. Hundreds of women torched his post with comments: ‘Interesting description of masculinity, much to ponder’; ‘For me, watching the video of Bukowski’s fight with his girlfriend was very revealing and, since then, my interest in his work has waned sharply. I’m not interested. What’s more, it disgusts me’.
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So the feminist blogs and the media launched the bombshell with severe questions: Is claiming Bukowski sexist? Is it possible to be a feminist and a fan of Bukowski? wondered the Mexican journalist Eduardo Bautista. The Chilean interviewer makes a startling revelation that reflects the effect of the stories of the terrible Henry Chinaski, the novelist’s alter ego.
‘A long time ago, before I met Bukowski personally, when I had just discovered him and was dabbling in his reading for the first time, it occurred to me to start reading aloud one of the stories from ‘The Fucking Machine’ to a writer who was visiting me. in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where I lived for a few years. Before the two pages, my friend got up and indignantly told me not to continue and she went to the bathroom, to throw up.
But the remembered writer until his death continued to face feminists. ‘I call them ‘complaining machines’. Things with a man are never good for them. And when they throw all that hysteria at me, forget it… I have to get out, grab the car and go. Anywhere. Get something to drink anywhere. Anywhere. Anything but another woman’. The teacher died in 1994 and must be getting drunk with Satan. I turn off the TV.
