I enjoyed the hell out of this book. A must read. ( )

I adored this book. I haven't read the Beats seriously since I was in my early twenties; my few attempts to return to the well have been unsatisfying. But this book was magnificent. Somehow I hadn't read it before, even though I've got Mockingbird Wish Me Luck on my limited shelves.

I'd forgotten all about that outsider spirit that I used to have - the sense that society didn't really want much to do with the likes of me and that most people lead pretty narrow, constrained little lives and it takes serious energy, effort and insight to break out of that - but this book brought it all back. I was never tough, but I was gay and smart and passionate about literature and I really did feel like I was on the outside looking in at society.

The narrator and protagonist, Henry Chinaski, is a brilliant character. He's acerbic and misanthropic and absolutely uninterested in taking any conventional wisdom for granted. He tells his life story like he's an alien - baffled at everything he sees. The prose is witty, clear, energetic and has tremendous momentum. Every single character is unhinged, although Chinaski only likes the ones who are aware of it.

There's every chance reading this book has just happened to coincide with the beginning of my midlife crisis, but the evidence against that is I can see how little this "outsider" story applies to today. I don't think that what young people today need is to get in more fights and dabble in fascism. Nor do I find myself yearning for this simpler time. Instead, I am struck by the fact that a brilliantly specific setting - in this case a specific time, but in many other books it's a place - lends a universality to literature. The pervasiveness of the mood of the time (this book is mostly set in the Depression) is brilliantly realised. The characters seem to be both aware that they are living through something but also just getting on with the business of living. One day great literature will be written about now (if we make it far enough into the future), how we marched toward climate catastrophe, the rise of fascism and/or irreversible inequality with a simultaneous sense of outrage and resignation. ( )

I was encouraged to read this by a friend who I respect greatly. He's an incredible film director and prolific musician and all around badass. He ( )

Una novela autobiográfica, contundente como un preciso uppercut, que nos muestra una visión bien distinta del «Sueño Americano», una visión «desde abajo», desde los pisoteados y humillados: la infancia, adolescencia y juventud de Henry Chinaski, en Los Ángeles, durante los años de la Depresión y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Un padre brutal que cada día finge acudir puntualmente al trabajo para que sus vecinos no sospechen que está en paro; una madre apaleada por el padre, que sin embargo está siempre de su parte; un tío a quien busca la policía; un mundo de jefes, de superiores aterrorizados por otros superiores. El joven Chinaski algo así como un hermano paria de Holden Cauldfiel, el dulce héroe de Salinger en The Catcher in the Rye (al que Bukowski parece aludir en el título original Ham on Rye) tiene que aprender las reglas implacables de una durísima supervivencia. En este libro inolvidable, escrito con una ausencia total de ilusiones, se transparenta, evitando la autocompasión, una estoica fraternidad con todos los chinaskis, todos los underdogs de la «otra América» de los patios traseros, los bares sórdidos, las oficinas de desempleo.

A real page turner to be sure, but I really hope it's not much autobiographical. BTW My copy has a different cover, it was published in 2001 and sold in a UK bookstore. ( )