ŷ������

It's a fact that one's childhood and adolescence form one's world outlook, shape the character and, actually, condition one's future. The protagonist (the author) had a traumatizing childhood not because he was growing up during the Great Depression or because their family was poor, but because he had terrible parents.
'Ham on Rye' is about anger, pain, isolation and sadness of Henry's childhood and adolescence. Rough life means rough writing style which makes you feel uncomfortable because the author doesn't bother filtering the language used to honestly describe the hostile environment he has to survive and find his place in.
Bukowski is not quite my type of author but it was worth a try. By the way, some years ago I read some of his poetry and I liked it.

'The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'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. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to 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. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother’s Day…was a man born 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.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I looked at my father, at his hands, his face, his eyebrows, and I knew that this man had nothing to do with me. He was a stranger. My mother was non-existent. I was cursed. Looking at my father I saw nothing but indecent dullness. Worse, he was even more afraid to fail than most others.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'All my life, in that neighborhood, I had been walking into spider webs, I had been attacked by blackbirds, I had lived with my father. Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy. It was either unbearably hot for weeks on end, or it rained, and
when it rained it rained for five or six days. The water came up over the lawns and poured into the houses. Who’d ever planned the drainage system had probably been well paid for his ignorance about such matters. And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. I didn’t like what I saw down there. Those men and women had no special daring or brilliance. They wanted what everybody else wanted. There were also some obvious mental cases down there who were allowed to walk the
streets undisturbed. I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. I knew that I wasn’t entirely sane. I still knew, as I had as a child, that there was something strange about myself. I felt as if I were destined to be a murderer,
a bank robber, a saint, a rapist, a monk, a hermit. I needed an isolated place to hide. Skid row was disgusting. The life of the sane, average man was dull, worse than death. There seemed to be no possible alternative. Education also seemed to be a trap. The little education I had allowed myself had made me more suspicious. What were doctors, lawyers, scientists? They were just men who allowed themselves to be deprived of their freedom to think and act as individuals. I went back to my shack and drank��'