Ham on Rye

By Charles Bukowski

Book Overview

"Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the
Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural
language. Bukowski moved it a little farther." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

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, woman, 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006117758X
• ISBN13: 9780061177583
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

human, all too human

for a long time i've resisted reading bukowski becuase i sort of thought it might be a bit adolescent . How wrong can you be .This was superb honest and moving .A real account of real relationships and real existence. It's also very funny at points . The narrator chinski is unfailingly honest about himself and the live he leads which stops the book becoming a series of macho conquests .The women give as good as they get in the main and chinski comes across as less of an aggressor and more of a victim of his own desires (as men in real life generally are ) He also allows himself to be very vulnerable, which is what is missing from almost all literary novels .The authors have the technique down....but not the desire to show themselves in all their disgusting, faded ,glorious, human detail . After reading this i went on to read 'Factotum' , 'Love is a dog from hell and other poems' and 'Ham on rye'. All were quite superb ...particularly ' Ham on rye '. It's been a very long time since i've discovered a writer who makes me want to read book after book ..... and also effects the way you see life . You begin to understand through bukowski that the pain we all feel at times in life, is not some terrible thing fate has singled us out to suffer.... but is a part of life to be accepted. In cocnclusion, I'd give it 6 stars if i could.....

Not for the faint of heart

First off, this book will offend people. It will probably offend you. You need to be offended. You need to be shaken out of your complacency. You need to be smacked upside the head with the crude and vulgar beauty of Bukowski's life and prose. You should get an injection of his drunken, debauched lifestyle. You should read this book.This is the first Bukowski novel that I have read, on a recommendation from a friend. The man has a way with words. A true Hemingway in the way he gives insightful and penetrating descriptions of people, but never actually tells you what they are thinking. He is able to paint a deep character profile of all the many women in his life with a little dialogue and some crazy actions. Some may find it degrading towards women, but I don't feel that it is. Sure, he is sometimes crude, sometimes angry, sometimes insulting towards women, but he is equally so towards himself. If anything, I feel he shows the tragic sexual immaturity of both women and men. While his lifestyle may be on the extreme, and something that most of us have never even gotten close to, he demonstrates things that anyone who has been in a relationship can identify with. All in all, I don't think Bukowski was writing a book about relationships that people would identify with. That is far too cheesy and mid '90s flaky for him. I think this was more just a painful self-evisceration. I think he was tearing himself open, and laughing about it, and proudly showing off his darkest, and also his most beautiful, thoughts, actions, and emotions.

enter mr. bukowski...

as the first book of charles bukowski's that i ever read, "Women" holds a special place in my heart. it is an insane story of henry chinaski and his misunderstandings and communications with women. autobiographical to an extent, this book, and all of bukowski's, are special because they are so graphically and emotionally honest. no one else paints such candid portraits of the human psyche in its most degenerate and politically incorrect situations. no other author can put so much vulgarity into a work and make it sound as natural as bukowski does. everything and every word in his novels have a place and a meaning, making his writing style so refreshingly satisfying, that you can't help but to live vicariously through his beautiful insanity. "women" introduced me to this great american poet/novelist, and it is my belief that this book definitely makes for a proper introduction to his works.

worth twice its price

College Hill Bookstore, Brown University, Providence, RI. I'm a prospective student, visiting, waiting to meet my student host, feeling strange, feeling out of place, killing time. Bukowski jumps out at me from the bookshelf in the Poetry section. Women. I read three pages. I, world's biggest cheapskate and 16-year-old with a job that pays *less* than minimum wage, shell out $16 and walk out of the store with a quick step and a smile. I read it in a sandwich shop and felt like I was following my nutso ex-lover down dirty streets watching her walk away with my furniture. I got drunk. I had sex. I finished my sandwich. I've designed an independent study English class for myself just so I can read Bukowski. I feel like I understand women better now, and I *am* one.