Charles Bukowski- Ham on Rye

Ham on Rye

Canongate

 Charles Bukowski

1982

Other Bukowski Reviews; Post Office - Factotum - Women - Ham on Rye - Tales of Ordinary Madness - Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”

It's taken me longer to realise this than it really should have, but Chuck Bukowski is an absolute five-star master of prose fiction, in my mind equal to the likes of Joseph Conrad, George Orwell and (my pick for his most similarly talented contemporary) Kurt Vonnegut. I should have recognised this earlier, having first read his most famous work, Post Office, but, in my defense Bukowki's style is resolutely inapproachable, disgustingly grimy and in-your-face at every opportunity. I like to think it was a tough nut to crack.

Ham on Rye, his fourth novel, again brings back semi-autobiographical lead character Henry Chinaski. In  prior novels the reader viewed the adventures of Chinaski as a grown man, struggling with the vices of life in the underbelly of the big city. Heavily stylistic, those books were full of potentially depressing, soul-destroying insight into the world from the lowest point of view possible, but personally I felt that Bukowski's unmistakable prose style and the incessant deluge of down-and-out plot developments made it hard to look past the jet black humour and see a more rounded character beyond. Ham on Rye is the novel that addresses that, and as a result both stands out as a piece of individual brilliance while putting the character as a whole into a larger context.

Reading this novel about the youth and young manhood of Chinaski had two consecutive effects for this reader. The first, from a critical standpoint, was that Bukowski manages to make the twisted, antisocial and incredibly bitter, but perhaps two-dimensional drinker of his early works make perfect sense in this fuller context. The second, very powerful effect this had for me was to remove a large portion of the black humorous tone and replace it with an alternative, recognisable realism. This is, to be somewhat cliche, an origin story. Much of it is depressing or disgusting when you stop to think about it for a moment; Henry's parents are abusive, mentally and physically, and through their fearful efforts to control a child of changing times and turn him into a model slave, they create a monster.

Bukowski or Chinaski?

Bukowski charts the growth of Chinaski in a fairly organised manner, smoothly charting the key incidents of his life through junior high school up until his first employment. As a piece of character writing it is incredible, as Chinaski constantly grows with his experiences to become more intelligent and self-aware with age, but with that also more bitter and twisted. With his blunt, deceptively simple style, Bukowski describes key character-developing moments in Chinaski's life, many of them completely obscene; heavily focusing on sex, violence and alcohol, as Chinaski goes through perhaps the worst puberty imaginable. Ostracised and abused, the growth of Chinaski into a deadbeat beer-dependent creature is remarkable, and surely must be uncomfortable reading for those of a lighter disposition. The keys to the consistent, enveloping tone are the unspoken blurred lines between real life and fantasy. I haven't read a Bukowski biography, something I think made the effect stronger, as the outlying concept that this life was, to some extent, a real one projected by the author into this version helps empower the novel.

Though this book is nasty and downbeat to the extent where I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, it is a remarkable piece of art. Bukowki's mastery of his own particular style has been honed to perfection, and the depth of character work he puts into Ham on Rye results in one of the finest novels I've read; another negative take on the American dream following Fitzgerald, Burroughs, Vonnegut and the like, joining them in the company of the culture's greatest contributors.