Ham On Rye: Bukowski Charles (Canons) - Softcover

Bukowski, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782116664 ISBN 13: 9781782116660

Publisher: Canongate Canons, 2015

Synopsis

INTRODUCTION BY RODDY DOYLE

'He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels' LEONARD COHEN

Charles Bukowski is one of the greatest authors of the twentieth-century. At the forefront of American counter-culture, his Beat Generation writing is widely celebrated alongside authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan and William S. Burroughs. The autobiographical Ham on Rye is widely considered his finest novel. A classic of American literature, it offers powerful insight into his youth through the prism of his alter-ego Henry Chinaski, who grew up to be the legendary Hank Chinaski of Post Office and Factotum.

About this title

Review:

Charles Bukowski's fourth novel, Ham on Rye, is the semi-autobiographical story of the early years of his alter ego Henry Chinaski. It is a finely written and honest account of the painful childhood of a boy marked out from his peers. Regularly beaten by his father, Chinaski is shown growing through his difficult and violent adolescence (struck with the worst case of acne his doctors have ever seen) through to the first jobs he can't and won't hold down. In this moving story of growing up Bukowski disciplines his muscular, concentrated writing and creates a novel that distils his poetry into the finest full-length piece of prose that he ever wrote. Bukowski is often good but in Ham on Rye he's great.

Sadly, best known as the alcoholic inspiration for the film Barfly (an experience he reflected on in his book Hollywood), it is as a poet, rather than a drunk, that Bukowski should be best remembered. His bitter, caustic, direct, humane, damaged poetry reflects a life dominated by poverty and booze. His poetry stretches over many, many volumes but Bukowski also wrote great novels: all of them have many faults but the first four books he wrote shine for similar reasons. Post Office and Factotum both dissect, quite brilliantly, the life of an angry, poor man forced to do mindless jobs, pushed around and considered mindless by the fools who force him to do them. Women, as Roddy Doyle points out in his short introduction, continues the themes but focuses on the numerous women who share his hero's bed and bottle. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

"A scorching account of a childhood, adolescence, a life of ugliness, pain, escape, alcohol, loneliness. Often it is's funny - often it's disturbing - Ham on Rye is a powerful book" (Roddy Doyle)

"He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels" (LEONARD COHEN)

"In an age of conformity, Bukowski wrote about the people nobody wanted to be: the ugly, the selfish, the lonely, the mad" (Observer)

"Sometimes funny and always sad, Ham on Rye is written in an admirably hard, bare, vivid style" (Times Literary Supplement)

"Both powerful and, where appropriate, extremely funny" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Reflective, humane, tremendously evocative and absorbingly readable" (The Times)

"This great novel is Bukowski's supremely honest account of a twisted childhood" (Howard Sounes author of Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life)

"The Thing about Bukowski is, when you read what he has to say, he's right" (SEAN PENN)

"Raunchy yet lyrical, occasionally hilarious while abysmally sad" (San Francisco Chronicle)

"We all knew Bukowski was a tough guy, but who would have guessed that even the grave could not shut him up?" (BILLY COLLINS)

"There is a real poignancy in the people encountered in Bukowski's work" (New York Times Book Review)

"A Laureate of American low life" (Time) --Roddy Doyle

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Canons
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1782116664
• ISBN 13: 9781782116660
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368