Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Holy shit!

This is the story of Henry Chenaski, Charles Bukowski’s alter ego, who had a helluva depressing childhood in large part due to a father who was a real son of a bitch and whom I blame for Henry’s later love of the bottle, to a lesser extent due to the Depression that hit the States, and Los Angeles, when Henry grew up.

My heart bled for young Henry; like when his father forced him to mow the lawn when all the other kids on the street were out playing. When Henry was done, his father put his head down on the lawn, cheek on grass, spotted a stray blade of grass and (view spoiler)[ beat young Henry � again � with his leather belt (hide spoiler)].

There was something about his loneliness and his plight, in the first part of the book, which reminded me of Holden Cauldfield ( The Catcher in the Rye). Both Henry and Holden throw around goddamned tough language whenever possible but are essentially lost kids. (There’s even the word ‘rye� in the titles of both stories, surely two of the only titles in literary history to use that word).

Apart from his pestilential father, Henry suffered from the meanest boils imaginable and went through a horrible ordeal for years trying to get rid of them while being painfully aware that a head full of boils (not to mention a back) didn’t exactly attract the girls. At this point he met one of the few good people to cross his path during his childhood, the nurse who treated him for the boils: ‘She was the kindest person I’d met in eight years.� (Henry’s mother wasn’t unkind to Henry; she just didn’t stop Henry’s father but rather joined Henry in his victimhood).

As Henry grew up, the graphic details increased. There were perhaps one or two of these I could have done without, but you sense it’s part of the honesty project here; if Henry (a.k.a. Charles) thought about these things � as there’s evidence to support he did, excessively so � they went into the book. He got more obsessed with girls (and their legs, and their hair, and their�.), and as he grew older, he became obsessed with women. And with booze. He turned into the Bukowski I’d read about. This novel provided much of the background.

Here’s another classic and perhaps even defining situation: Right after his high school graduation, Henry’s father is � once again � on Henry’s case about not amounting to much. ‘Why did I have a son like you?� he says to Henry, comparing him to some other kid. ‘How come you never applied yourself?� etc. etc. No congratulations, no ‘good job, son � you did what I never managed to do�. None of that. I found myself saying out loud, (view spoiler)[’Well, Mr. Chenaski, maybe if you hadn’t spent your years as a father beating up your son with a leather strap once or twice a week for the tiniest thing and in stead taken an interest in him, he might have amounted to more. (hide spoiler)]

While I felt for the kid Henry Chenaski, I felt increasingly annoyed with his unpleasant adult self who, perhaps unsurprisingly, seemed bent on drinking himself into a stupor and general oblivion whenever possible, picking fights and heading deliberately for the low life on skid row. As a young man he seemed determined to become a loser while disdaining anyone who wasn’t. Though somehow: Who could blame him?

It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

Henry’s existential derailment seemed circular and monotonous towards the end, which perhaps underlines the authenticity and the tragedy of his life if not the sense of literary appreciation on my part. Still, there were many linguistic gems � in that completely non-show-off-y kind of way, which in some ways also characterizes Catcher: an informal, mid-20th century, colloquial tone which lays bare a life, sometimes annoys, sometimes draws on your sympathy, sometimes makes you laugh and often gives you glimpses of what kind of writer Hank/Charles was to become.

Potential landlord: You working?
Henry: I’m a writer
PL: You don’t look like a writer
H: What do they look like?

Even in Henry’s increasing feeling of alienation, we sense something else underneath the scarred surface, an energy with which he might learn to suppress his apparent death wish.

Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.