I’ve heard this crap before. Yet another indignant asshole talking trash about Charles Bukowski. Every few years or so, I hear from a total stranger or a misguided mutual acquaintance expounding on what a shitty man Bukowski was. I’m no Bukowski scholar, but I think I know enough about one of the greatest poets of my generation to speak the truth. Bukowski was a drunk. Bukowski said moronic stuff most of the time. Bukowski beat women. I’ve heard it year after year, and to prove their point, they sent a YouTube video of a drunk Bukowski kicking his wife, Linda. He's calling her names and stating that he would hire his “Jewish” lawyer to get a divorce and throw her out of his house! A lot of ranting and raging drunken drivel. Not only guilty of anti-Semitism, but also a woman-hating drunken racist. You can’t live it down.
It doesn’t change a damn thing about the man or his poetry. Shitty human being, great poet. By the way, for the record, the person who said the terrible things about Bukowski is also a poet. I’ll call it what it is, famous poet envy. This guy is obviously pissed at the talent and worldwide acclaim Bukowski had and still receives to this day posthumously. What the hell? There are theme bars around the world called Bukowski, and why didn’t the offenders stop to think about it? These people should keep their mouths shut. The bottom line is that a person isn’t their work. You can’t judge somebody solely by their negative attributes.
The last word about Bukowski's putdown phenomenon is that it’s always the drunken ass who’s a chauvinist pig. And the revelation is always true—more often than not, the teller is just as flawed, but of course not as much as the person they’re judging. That would be the pot calling the kettle an asshole. They’re defiant in the face of their own hypocrisy. Judge not, or some other, I told you so, gotcha moment throwing rocks around your glass house. The fact is that people who, at one time in the past, were just as bad, or worse, as sexist as any drunken poet could be, then got sober.
There was a time when Bukowski was all I needed. There were other poets I admired and related to, but Bukowski was always the guy for my literary fix. He laid out lines like a hard-core cokehead. Poetry can be pretty lame when you consider that the vast majority of poets are lousy people. They flock together, inflicting their bad poetry and nepotism on their poetic cliques, just like in real life. Bad habits and worse behavior, it’s stereotypical to a large extent by systematically grouping poets into a singular category of mediocrity. I’m no apologist for shitty behavior or a devil's advocate for bad poets, but they’re no different from any other cast of chuckle-headed characters outstanding in their field.
This poet in question took the drunken woman beater shtick a step further by accusing Bukowski of anti-Semitism. This is laughable, the person who made the accusation is Jewish, and Bukowski is also a German Jew. Even his grandma’s last name was Israel. Through all the years I’ve read everything ever published by and about Bukowski, I never saw anything in print that would back up the claim he was racist.
Another Bukowski detractor, this time baiting a dead poet with a bad living poet of lesser-known acclaim. It’s no surprise given the current situation with the Israelis versus Palestine and the present-day persecution of Jews. The point is, this guy is an unwitting victim of his own ancestral heritage. You can play the victim of your heritage. I can call Netanyahu an anti-Semite, it changes nothing. The prime minister’s acting like a little Nazi now anyway. Wasn’t he considered a war criminal?
No one’s immune to prejudice, bigotry and violence. I’m sure Bukowski’s personal problems were legion, and it's likely more than a few of them were racist devils. All the recent hubbub name-calling came about because the city of Los Angeles wanted to designate his dumpy little studio apartment into an historic landmark building. Put on the Hollywood landmark list of famous locales, along with the Hollywood sign and the La Brea tar pits.
A part of the tour bus stops on the map to the homes of the stars. I don’t know what the outcome of that was. It’s not on my list to see the shithole where Bukowski lived and wrote his poetry and stories. It’s after the fact. Bukowski was human. With all his warts, flaws, and old-school bluster machismo, they’ll always find ways to put down the dead anti-hero. There’s still plenty of bad living poets who are still writing bad poetry.