To forewarn any Christian mgtows out there, Charles Bukowski’s writing, more often than not, was filty and explicit. So I haven’t read him since I recommitted myself back to God. But I think there are some great mgtow philosophies that I picked up from the readings I did from his bibliography. My favorite books of his are, in no order: Post Office, Hollywood, Factotum, and Women. I have read a total of 14 of his books. The books other than my favorites are largely forgetable. But I loved these books so much I would estimate that I reread each book at least 6 times, sometimes up to 10 times. Aside from ingraining into me good prose composition, the underlying philosophies I think showed an incredible amount of insight, and a mgtow will see their values.
1. The high cost of women – His book Women does spend a lot of time focusing on female drama. At one point, he is trying to separate himself from a woman who he has been hot and cold with. This woman, Lydia, still wants him after he has met a new woman who he has already slept with when she creates a scene at the new woman’s apartment. Lydia throws a beer bottle through the glass door, among other destructive acts.
Buk later mentions in another book, Factotum I think, that women always want to start fights and seem to have to have drama. Sometimes over the course of the four books I read the most, Buk does drift in and out of less dramatic relationships. But also he is ornery and does quite a few things the reader will see the most of in Women and Factotum. Because of a particular event in which Buk sleeps with 3 different women in the same night, on the same boat, the producers in the gynocentric world thought that was just too much for the film version. It was given an arthouse release in 2005 (?), starring Matt Dillon and Marissa Tomei. There were many concepts or subtexts that made women cringe, if they even saw it.
2. What made women cringe about Buk (aka Henry Chinaski)? He was unapologetic about his life, his attitude and his identity. He seemed to need sex, but generally when the drama factor got high, he separated himself. Some females in his books were nearly invisible to him, possibly alluding to the reality of the female in the real world who also usually has no concept of who they are. A notable example is in Post Office, the female birthing his only child (Marina Bukowski) only referred to as “Old Snaggletooth”.
3. He seemed to detach from work and most of the employees. The exception is when he becomes friends with Manny in Factotum. He and Manny have a scheme where they take bets from other workers, and then sneak out of work to get to the track, in a mad rush. Manny has his own ideas about women: he refers to them as a full time job, especially the constant amount of sex they apparently want from him. Bukowski is not far from agreement, “I suppose they are a drain,” he says. The tedium of every job is also not overlooked in his novels. In Factotum he travels across the country working in different places (not in the film), and without fail, quits or gets fired. Sometimes he is caught drinking or drunk, sometimes he hates the boss, sometimes he goes on a bender, but despite all the horrible situations he goes through, he is not a tragic figure. Even at the end of Factotum, he is broke and homeless, and spends his last dime on a girly show. He takes it like a man, neither humble nor proud, and deals with the situation at hand.
4. Which leads me to the next idea: “One job at a time.” In Post Office, employees are asking him to do certain things, but he doesn’t get bogged down in their crap. He just turns his head and gets back to work, jamming in the envelopes. This lax attitude can be deceptive, it can read as ineptitude. But when the job is on the line, he passes the “scheme” test for the post office.
5. When a situation goes haywire, go haywire with it – it may be the only road to sanity. In Post Office, he delivers a certified letter to a crazy woman. She snatches it from his hand, and he puts his foot in the door to get inside. She starts immediately screaming Rape! to nobody, and for no reason. So he does the next logical thing, wrong as it was. And she signed the letter.
6. Buk knew that freedom did not come from a woman, or a job, or material crap. Even after he was a legit writer with a career, he lived in that apartment in Hollywood for some time. There was for a spell, a movement that tried to keep a developer from tearing it down just because he wrote Women there. He drove an old Volks. He claims he didn’t get the BMW until after his wife cooerced him into it. But even after he had it, he pulls into a biker bar. He could care less.
7. Buk seemed to notice that not only women were crazy, but everyone else was too. In Ham On Rye, which was not a great book, he and his buddies get in a boat on some pond in LA. A guy pulls out a revolver from his pocket and starts shooting holes in the boat. Most everyone in Hollywood were crazy, from a gambling-addicted actor, the director who threatens to saw his finger off, to the maze of weirdos who populate the movie culture. But Buk doesn’t seem to get too infected by the hysteria too often, at least in his writing style. He is bucolic, distanced, and cool.
8. Buk taught me, though he was long dead, that this philosophy of One Day At A Time, can and should be generalized to a lot of other things. Buk had a way of breaking down the larger concepts or plot lines into simpler ideas. He wasn’t afraid to use short sentences. He didn’t have to jam into a pointless, incomprehensible 48 word run on the whole history of the world.
And that’s what I’m trying to learn these days. One day, one minute at a time. If a minute is too long, I sit on my hands and breathe, using mindfulness and awareness, NOT coping.
Hope this was of assistance to you gents!
Note the number of times in the Bible that Jesus uses "he" when speaking to groups...
Reclus 2 years ago.
