Product Description

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #365579 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-05
• Released on: 2002-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry when he was thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three. During his lifetime he published over forty-five books of poetry and prose—many translated into more than a dozen languages. His worldwide popularity remains undiminished, and Ecco is proud to publish the five posthumous collections of his work (this volume is the fifth and final) in addition to a new selection of his later works, The Pleasures of the Damned.

Customer Reviews

Great work from a disciplined writer
At times in his life, Charles Bukowski may have lived like the dissolute Hank Chinaski, his alcoholic protagonist in post office: A Novel, Factotum, Women: A Novel, and HAM ON RYE. But in reading HoR, the quality that communicated most clearly to this reader was Buk's immense discipline. There's no self-indulgence, anywhere, in this book. There's no material, anywhere, that doesn't immediately contribute to the development of Hank's character. This discipline means that HoR has absolutely zero bloat. There's not a word that's wasted.

HoR has 58 chapters, few longer than five pages. It begins with Hank's first memory and then gradually moves from his childhood, through his adolescence, and to his young manhood, with each chapter developing some new aspect of Hank's personality and life. The amazing thing is that the perceptions never get ahead of Hank's age, with the boyish Hank seeing boyish issues, the adolescent Hank showing how his upbringing and experiences affected his teenage outlook, and so on.

This discipline makes HoR a remarkable reading experience. In one chapter, you can see Bukowski, say, add a little depth to the adolescent mentality of Hank. In the next, he adds a little breadth. In fact, Buk's control in each chapter is so tight that the chapters lend themselves perfectly to capsule summations. In my marginalia, for example, I find: Hank wins a medal but declines to pursue success (chapter 41); head games during and after baseball confirm the funny Hank's sense of failure (42); bold Hank humbled by his failed seduction of his only friend's mother (43). What am I saying? In every chapter, Buk shows something new about Hank. This is character that is always developing.

Furthermore, Buk always stays within voice--not an easy task for an author taking a character through his formative years. Here's that voice at the start of Chapter 44, with Hank, a high school senior, considering his future.

"I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. ...To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. ...was a man borne just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room, and drink myself to sleep."

One final point: In Chapter 52, Hank's father throws him out (he's enraged his son is writing short stories) and Hank is made to begin his adult life. In this and subsequent chapters, Hank's shenanigans morph from sad but hilarious contrariness to something darker, as the masterful Bukowski clarifies the underlying story he's been telling.

When men were men
"Ham on Rye" was my first introduction to the writing of Charles Bukowski, and tells the story of his alter-ego, Henry Chinaski. It is semi-autobiographical, so when reading, it is best to approach the entire book as fiction, rather than trying to attribute events in the book with the real life of Bukowski. It begins with Chinaski's youth during the Great Depression, and relates his struggles with social and familial acceptance from elementary school through college. The book focuses on his relationship with poor relationship with his parents and a puzzling general disdain for his peers. One of the reasons this book is so fascinating is because it is written in a seemingly crude and blunt prose, detailing a hard life surrounded by fighting, drinking, and women. It shows a culture where daily fights were a necessary part of life and brings forward an image much like we would consider our lives to be like if we lived back in the Old West, and were forced to challenge a man for cheating at cards or looking at you funny.

With my air-conditioned office, feather bed, and teeth whitening strips, I can't imagine I would ever have survived in Chinaski's world, so it's enjoyable to experience it from the safety of Bukowski's novel. Although I mentioned a "crude" writing style, that should not be confused with poor writing. Bukowski's to-the-point style makes for an extremely easy read that I was able to finish in a few hours, unlike the usuals novels that I pore over for weeks to get through. Even though Chinaski is portrayed as a "tough guy," Bukowski does not shy away from detailing all of his faults as well, which describe a young man filled with self doubt and a lack of ambition. While I'm not sure how Ham on Rye would fare with female audiences, I highly recommend it for males in the 15-35 age range.

To read Bukowski's novels about Pinaski chronologically, follow this order:

Ham on Rye: A Novel - Early life, elementary school to college
Factotum - Young adulthood, World War II era
post office: A Novel - Later years, 1952 - 1969
Women: A Novel - Later years, as a poet and writer
Hollywood - Dealing with Chinaski's later life as a screenwriter

More genius from Bukowski.
I read this book, and I loved it. It's from this novel that I had to read four or five more Bukowski novels, and I wasn't disappointed. This book is brilliance. I really loved it.