Biography of Charles Bukowski

Perennial disappointments

August 16, 1920
March 9, 1994
I want a life rude, of those lives like that. I want a life who cares, who cares about all Yes. I want a wild life, the kind that you never sleep". If Henry Charles Bukowski, said Hank, had heard the famous song of Vasco Rossi, you can bet that she'd fallen in love with on the fly. Probably would have made its own anthem. Don't pair too far to fans of "Hank" (as it often was called, with autobiographical coquetry, several characters of his books) the combination with local singer-songwriter, but Bukowski, born on August 16, 1920 in Andernach (a small town near Cologne), the wild life, street life and wandering, he probably embodied at best, like few others in the world. Son of a former artilleryman of American troops,
Charles has only three years old when her family moved to Los Angeles, in the United States. Here he spent his childhood forced by their parents to an almost total isolation from the outside world. Already you can see the first signs of his rebellious streak and a fragile, confused vocation to writing. At age six, was a child with a character already well-formed: shy and afraid, banned from baseball games played under house, mocked for his tenuous Teutonic accent, manifests difficulties of insertion.
At the age of thirteen starts drinking and attending a rowdy gang of thugs. Charles Bukowski in 1938 he graduated without much enthusiasm to "L.A. High School and left home at the age of 20. Thus began a period of wandering marked by alcohol and by an infinite sequence of odd jobs. Bukowski's in New Orleans, San Francisco, St. Louis, stay in a guesthouse-brothel of cutthroats Filipinos, does the dishwasher, the valet, the bellhop, wakes up on park benches, some time ends even in jail. And continues to write. His stories and his poems are found in newspapers as "Story" but above all on the pages of underground magazines.
It is not a fleeting or poetic creative SAP leads him to write, but the anger, the bitterness of life right in front of the wrongs and the heartlessness of other men. The stories of Charles Bukowski is organized around an autobiography almost obsessively. Sex, alcohol, horse racing, the squalor of marginal lives, the hypocrisy of the "American dream" are the themes on which they are interwoven infinite variations thanks to a fast writing, simple yet extremely fierce and corrosive. Hired by the Postal Office in Los Angeles and opened a stormy relationship with Jane Baker, Bukowski's 60 years ' 50 crosses continuing to publish semi-clandestinely, smothered by the monotony of life and undermined by excesses of all kinds. In September of 1964 becomes father of Marina, born from the fleeting marriage with Frances Smith, young poet.
Begins the important collaboration with the weekly alternative "Open City": its poisonous columns are collected in the book "diary of a dirty old man", which will give him wide acclaim among the youthful protest. Hope you can become a writer full time gave him the courage to quit from the unbearable Post Office at the age of 49 years (those years are condensed in the memorable "Post Office"). Begins the period of poetic readings , experienced as real torment. In 1969, after the tragic death of Jane nipped by alcohol, Bukowski knows the man destined to change his life: John Martin. Manager by profession and fond of literature by vocation, Martin had been strongly impressed by Bukowski poems much to ask him to leave the job to the post office to devote himself entirely to writing. He'd take care of the organizational phase of the whole operation, providing periodic allowance as an advance to pay Bukowski on copyright and pledging to promote and market his work. Bukowski accepts the proposal. Encouraged by the good results achieved by the first decorative printed a few hundred copies, John Martin founded the "Black Sparrow Press", expecting to publish all works of Charles Bukowski. In a few years is success. Initially the consensus seem to be limited to Europe, then the legend of "Hank" Bukowski, last cursed writer, arrives in the United States. Starts the period of reading poetry, lived by Bukowski as a nightmare and magnificently documented in many of his stories. During one of these readings, in 1976, Bukowski know Linda Lee, unique among his many companions to mitigate the self-destructive streak, the only one among his companions by whimsical capable of putting a brake on the dangerous unpredictability of Hank.
Hardship indeed seem now terminated: Hobo Hank is wealthy and universally known as the writer of "Tales of ordinary madness". Linda makes him change the diet, reduces alcohol, encouraged him to stand up not ever before noon. The period of hardship and wandering closes permanently. The last years have lived in great serenity and comfort. But creativity does not fail. TB gets sick in 1988, however, in increasingly precarious physical condition, Bukowski continues to write and publish. His works are inspired by the two filmmakers Marco Ferreri and Barbet Schroeder for the same number of reductions. Documented by the now famous last words: "I gave you so many opportunities that you should take away a long time ago. I would like to be buried next to the track ... to hear the Sprint on the home stretch", death strikes on March 9, 1994.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.