Bukowski - Women - Review

Bukowski's Women was first published in 1979.  The setting is LA, California, which, in the late '70s, rings of an atmosphere familiar to my memory. I can see the author driving down the freeway in his 69 Volkswagon, speeding towards LAX to meet another "poet groupie" with who he had a brief correspondence. The pattern is the same: the women are between 20-32, and they've read his books. Before picking up their baggage, he insists on going to the bar for a few drinks. On arriving at his shitty apartment, they drink much more and end up in his bed, either performing miserably (too much to drink) or having a good exchange. The groupie will stay a couple of days and leave from where they came. 

The book is this, though much more. As a reader, there were so many 'encounters' and short-term relationships that it was difficult to separate them. All the names melded together as one woman, different only in age and profession. The woman he devotes the most words is Lydia. She's in her mid-twenties, beautiful. and a ticking time bomb that occasionally explodes dramatically. In one scene, the author returns to his apartment to find all his books gone and his beloved typewriter missing. He ventures outside only to be physically attacked, and later watches her smash his typewriter on the street several times. The woman is jealous. She has spent time in psychiatric care and is hooked on various drugs. The strange thing is Lydia is the woman who the author truly loves. 

As readers of Bukowski know, his main focus in life is booze, gambling, women/sex and writing. In his descriptive, and at times raunch prose, he can describe a sex scene graphically and with honest emotion. The author is old, ugly, and has acne scars and a pot belly. This does not stop the slew of women that knock on his door weekly. He loves women but treats them like meat; the younger, the better. The interesting point is all these women know the author is an alcoholic sex fiend, yet fall in love with the man anyway. This begs the question: are these women in love with the man or the writer? After finishing the novel, I believe it's a little of both. 

As one woman comments, once meeting the man, the tender and the honest poet doesn't exist, only on the page. After watching a short documentary on Bukowski, a journalist asks his young wife if she's in love with the writer or the man. She answered the "man," which noticeably pleased the writer. 

This novel of the late seventies is a cultural relic, where women, at least in public, were treated as merely baby-making machines and sexual objects. In our modern cancel culture, this book would never have been published. Different views, different attitudes, and a different culture in 1979. Despite the author's apparent 'disrespect' for women generally, close to the novel's end, he experiences an emotional breakdown, realizing he treats women like shit and is just an old, selfish asshole, only out for his own ends. This was a healthy epiphany, though. Despite this newfound self-realization, his behavior doesn't change - he returns to being a selfish prig.

This book is undoubtedly a relic of times past. I would not recommend this novel to young people searching for a literary example, forging ahead on their own writing path. However, the writing is crisp, descriptive, and honest. Bukowski doesn't care what we think and writes without literary pomp like he has something to prove. 

He's telling it like he sees it and nothing more.