Bukowski – Tales of Ordinary Madness – Comment

 One commentator describes Bukowski as the “godfather of low-life literature”. The man’s writing certainly delves into the realities of alcoholism, skid row antics, the act of writing, and unpleasant sexual exploits that at times are difficult to read. One wonders where the man has time to write at all considering the amount of alcohol he consumed daily. In many stories he awakes hung over and sick, sleeping in the afternoon, rising with his signature disgust with humankind.  

The man’s output as a writer is quite extraordinary. Thousands of poems, short stories, and several novels published. This doesn’t include the work that never arrived at the printer. In a few of his books, he describes his process of grabbing a bottle of wine, and sitting alone with his typewriter, listening to Mahler and Beethoven on the radio, banging away into the early morning.  

Tales of Ordinary Madness is a collection of short stories that combines the experiences of a drunken gambler, a sex fiend, and musings on Kant, great classical music from the 18th century, and critiques on contemporary writers like Hemingway, Norman Mailer and Ginsberg. He’s the bum in some ally in LA, with vomit on his torn coat, a bottle in his hand, thinking deeply about society, and life’s true meaning.  

There are a few stories in the collection that this reader found exceptionally intense.  

One of the more original and moving stories must be Animal Crackers in my Soup. The protagonist is coming off a bender and walking aimlessly through an unknown town. He’s at the point of collapse, dying of thirst, and randomly knocks on the door of a house. A woman answers and invites him in, giving him water and later a few meals and a bed to sleep in. The man discovers that the woman owns several wild animals: a tiger, monkeys, a baboon, birds and a variety of snakes. All the animals are housebroken, docile and love the woman. He calls the place a “liberated zoo.” The man develops a relationship with the animal/woman and ends up moving in. There’s something mystical about this growing relationship. The woman becomes pregnant, and later, a violent crime occurs in the home. The ending of the tale is the ultimate tragedy. As a reader of Bukowski, this story was unexpected.  

As a reader of this author, he never disappoints because of his skill for realism and absolute honesty. There is no writer today who is quite like him. A master of the down and dirty with flashes of the sublime.