Perhaps this is the reason for the work’s perpetual repetitiveness. Because of its coarse and digressive character, Women doesn’t read as if it were a novel instead, it resembles a raw document of an experience, a bloody chunk excised from the tissue of ordinary life. What is remarkable about the work is the bluntness of its “style,” its total reliance on ordinary language and the junk that is stockpiled in its every corner–that is, the superabundance of digressions, seemingly culled from the surfaces of everyday life. It is no accident, from this perspective, that Women is almost completely devoid of novelistic qualities. Women would serve as an instance of the author’s ecce homo, as a permutation of his self-manifestation. Throughout this work, Bukowski, apparently, shows himself as himself, revealing to the reader his self in all of its ugliness and misanthropy. Yes, it is true that the main character has a pseudonym, Henry Chinaski, and there is a publisher’s note that reads, “This novel is a work of fiction and no character is intended to portray any person or combination of persons living or dead.” And yet there are seemingly no other masks or precautions. Nothing else could account for the book’s enduring appeal and seductiveness. And in no other work does Bukowski seem to exhibit himself as purely as he does in Women (1978). Generally speaking, people are attracted to books that lead them to the existence of the human being who created them. This myth–one that Bukowski supported throughout his life–is the basis of the fascination surrounding his work and the reason for its cult-status. If one takes the author at his word, even in his writing, Bukowski is not a figure composed of paper and words but, rather, a real human being. He attempts to destroy the language of literature by presenting himself as he is, without disguise, subterfuge or literary artifice–a practice of writing that places his work at the furthest distance from the oeuvre of Kafka, Mallarmé and Blanchot. I mean, rather, that he is actively committed to destroying all traces of literary language in his writing. I am not suggesting that the author is not a literary artist. The work of Charles Bukowski affirms the destruction of literature. WOMEN (Charles Bukowski): A review by Dr. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE FACTS ON FILE COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN NOVEL CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO READ MY NOVEL TABLE 41.
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