Con sus relatos, reunidos en este volumen, escritos en total libertad para la revista underground Open City, Charles Bukowski se convirtió de inmediato en una celebridad «una leyenda viviente» (New York Review of Books), cuya fama fue aumentando vertiginosamente con la publicación de sus otros libros de relatos y poemas: «el sucesor de Miller y Burroughs» comentó Le Nouvel Observateur. Con su brutalidad, su salvaje y tierno sentido del humor, su tremenda sinceridad, Bukowski borracho, enloquecido, atrapado en una sociedad cuyos presuntos valores le asquean consigue, con su estilo descarnado y escueto, conectar inmediatamente con el lector.

It's been many years since I have returned to Henry Chinaski (Charles Bukowski) and through Notes of a Dirty Old Man, I was taken on yet another sometimes befuddling and sometimes profound reading experience. Bukowski mixes his prose with personal anecdotes and downright ridiculous absurdity, like a train wreck of thought. As he was churning these out for the Open City press, I gather Bukowski would have been writing many of the stories for his own amusement, just to see how far he could stretch a tale into the obscenely bizarre - as there are many in this collection that defy reality, but it is pertinent as it is free flowing intoxicating imagination peppered with some predicaments like the piece about Bukowski's parents and the Frozen Man that is quite introspectively sad. As with the story of Neal Cassady, there is something profoundly swift in the way it opens up the wounds of humanity, to drain the infection. As the title suggests, these are notes, and the man penning them is dirty minded and getting on in life. You can't argue with that.

Bukowski has morality and ethics, but they are measured within a tawdry urban world that is collapsing inside itself. For instance his shirt cardboard reflections, 'if you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence', in other societies and circles, the test of friendship would not be so extreme, but in Bukowski's world, a jail sentence would suffice as best a test of friendship as you can get. A writer like Wordsworth would draw for us the beauty of nature, but Bukowski points out that nature may be drawn as one thing but how it goes about its business of being natural is another thing entirely. He also speaks for the thoughts and actions of humanity that is not dogmatic idealism, some people are embarrassed when they fart, but imagine if they farted and had a follow through? This is what Bukowski is about. When the mind is roughing it, not taking the usual route.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man has all the stickiness of ill mannered sex, sordid situations, crass thoughts, and broken down poetry, but it does feel good to read it, like taking hard liquor that burns the throat, once it hits the belly it loosens you up. This book is not for those seeking Dostoyevsky or Chekhov, tales of the poor, set in earnest poverty - if misfortune is a stream, some writers would write about people trying to get out of it, or simply being carried away by its current, but Bukowski writes about splashing, bomb diving, paddling, skinny dipping and fishing in that stream of misfortune. That's what you'll discover in its pages. ( )

Just no ( )

Well, really, the title says it all! That, and this quote from Time on the front cover 'A laureate of American low life'. Yup, that's it!

Not every column in here is gold, but enough are that I really enjoyed myself! Bukowski just tells it like it is - with all the warts, puss, and nastiness therein. Sex with a man? Check. A 300 pound woman? Check. Taking a crap while two guys shave each other? Check mate! Sex, alcohol abuse, and lack of work lead to a transient life that is at both times hilarious, and terribly sad. And I enjoyed reading it. Hmm, what does that say about me? ( )

The stories often run shorter than the usual short stories, reminiscences abound, and Bukowski even goes on rambling rants. To say there's no other Bukowski book like this is about half true discounting More Notes From A Dirty Old Man. As always, Bukowski's writing is mostly without fault save for infer/imply confusion here and the political rant coming off rather dated and actually surprisingly sterile for a dirty old man.

Bukowski wrote this stuff for a column of the same name in a paper, I think called Open City in L.A. An underground thing? It's interesting how long he stayed underground, because it was the same material that he always did. Kinda like how Miles Davis was just blowing the same sort of notes in 1955 as he blew in 1949 but all the sudden Columbia was knocking. It makes fame look like a rather fickle bitch, but that's the way it goes. Again I go back to Miller because it seems he wrote thousands of pages of shit before he got to Tropic Of Cancer, then he went straight back to writing thousands of pages of crap, only he published them. Again, Bukowski was pretty much good right from the get-go although he supposedly got stories rejected on a very regular basis before the poetry bug got to him.

I guess it interests me so much because one person could maintain it and the other one fell completely apart both before and after the lightning hit. Kinda like The Wachowskis before and after The Matrix. Some things I'll never understand. But hey, that's what it means to live and I don't knock it. ( )