Ham on Rye

Charles Bukowski

ISBN 10: 0876855591 / ISBN 13: 9780876855591

Published by Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara, 1982

About this Item

Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, (1982). First edition, 1st printing. #83 of 350 copies. 8vo. 283 pp. Original cream paper boards over yellow cloth, spine label in blue and red, in original acetate dust-jacket. Acetate jacket shows light edge wear with surface scratches to gloss, rubbing, mild fading. Book is tight, square and firm. Interior clean and unmarked, sans droplet to ffep. Boldly signed by the author, with doodle of man and beer bottle in black pen on the rear colophon page. Also accompanied is the Ham on Rye promotional broadside/flyer No. 8 [but is actually No.9] (17 x 10 1/16?) printed in four colors on pale yellow paper. Folded into fourths, else fine.

Dust Jacket: Acetate: Near Fine

Hardcover: Fine

?Ham on Rye is a 1982 semi-autobiographical novel by American author and poet Charles Bukowski. Written in the first person, the novel follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's thinly veiled alter ego, during his early years. Written in Bukowski's characteristically straightforward prose, the novel tells of his coming-of-age in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. In 1969, Bukowski accepted an offer from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. He was then 49 years old. As he explained in a letter at the time, "I have one of two choices ? stay in the post office and go crazy . or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.".

Seller Inventory # ABE-1769566048933

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ham on Rye
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara
• Publication Date: 1982
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0876855591
• ISBN 13: 9780876855591
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition, Limited Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Ham on Rye follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's alter-ego, through his troubled high school years to the beginning of a long and destructive struggle with alcoholism. Henry's early experiences are a mix of wry misadventure and emotional turmoil. He struggles with women, sports, his own writing, and, most heartbreakingly, his father - a monster of a man who looms large over almost every page of this wise and tough account of adolescence.

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