Book Review: Charles Bukowsk SOUTH OF NO NORTH: Stories of the buried Life. Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara, 1973 (189 pages).

I have reread this collection of short stories twice recently and reckon it contains an incredible variety amongst its 27 stories. South of No North is sandwiched between two important books in the Bukowski canon, the short story collection Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972) and the poetry collection Burning In Water Drowning In Flame (1974). Two of the short stories which appear in the book ‘All the Assholes in the World and Mine’ (1966) and ‘Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts’ (1965) were originally published as chapbooks by Douglas Blazek. Some of the other short stories were first published in his columns for the Los Angeles Free Press and in the underground newspaper NOLA Express. The story ‘The Way the Dead Love’ contains sections from Bukowski’s abandoned novel which John Martin of Black Sparrow Press asked him to write in 1966.

The title, as David Stephen Calonne writes in his short Critical Lives study Charles Bukowski “suggests the directionlessness of many of his characters: they have no way to orient themselves.”

A majority of the stories are written from the point of view of Henri Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego. Several of the short stories are auto-biographical, including ‘Bop Bop That Curtain’ (childhood entertainment in L.A. during the 1930s), ‘Politics’ (Buk’s involvement in Nazism during his L.A. College days), ‘Remember Pearl Harbour’ (when Buk was imprisoned during World War 2 and suspected of avoiding military service), ‘This is What Killed Dylan Thomas (about a poetry reading in San Francisco) and ‘All the Assholes in the World and Mine’ which he famously recounts his painful haemorrhoid operation).

Overall, The writing in this book has a remarkable spontaneous feel to it, that anything can and will happen in the crude inventive hands of Bukowski.

Read the book online here: http://yanko.lib.ru/books/lit/bukowski.htm

Here’s my take on the best 10 short stories in SOUTH OF NO NORTH:

(10) Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts

Although you can get bored shitless reading Bukowski’s heavily auto-biographical short stories because of their sameness, this is a stand-out story in the shaping of the legend. In a series of vignettes, it takes us through some of the threshold experiences in his life, including his battle with Acne Vulgaris, how Buk almost bleed to death in the Charity Ward of the Los Angeles County Hospital in 1954, his work in a variety of dead-end jobs, his life with crazy women on skid row and his struggle to become a professional writer.

(9) Something About a Viet Cong Flag

Bukowski was fascinated with criminal behaviour and in many of his short stories he explored various aspects of crime from predators to the criminally insane. This story focuses on the rape of a woman Sally. The matter-of-fact tone is disquieting as seemingly ordinary events turn sinister.‘ The Killers’, Hit Man’ and to a lesser extent, ‘Maja Thurup’ are other crime stories you will find in this collection.

(8) You and Your Beer and How Great You Are

This is third person story about Jack Backenweld, a light-heavyweight boxer and his relationship with women. The dialogue is highly credible, and like much of Bukowski’s work, drives the story.

(7) Christ on Rollerskates

This is a satirical sports story. It begins with the owner and vice-president of the Yellowjackets, a Roller Derby team, interviewing a star player, Monster Chonjacki. The humour operates on many levels and centres on the cynical idea that the violence in the sport is faked and the fans “love to be fooled. ”

(6) The Way the Dead Love

These vignettes from his unpublished novel graphically represent Bukowsk’s “lost years” on skid-row in L.A. The heavy drinking, moving from one rooming house to the next and the mad, desperate characters he meets are credibly described.  More importantly, it is the dark days, Chinaski’s reoccurring nightmares, the black dog contemplation of suicide, the “walking through a sea of fire” which make this story immortal, particularly in section 6.

(5) Stop Staring at My Tits, Mister

This is a brilliant sexual spoof on the American Western. Big Bart is the meanest, most misogynistic man in the West. “There wasn’t a man his age who had killed more Indians or fucked more women or killed more white men… Even his farts were exceptional.” This is another of Bukowski’s hyperbolic male fantasies- full-on hilarious with plenty of mad one-liners.

(4) The Devil Was Hot

This is another outstanding short story cleverly crafted by Bukowski. The narrator, presumably Chinaski and his partner Flo arrive at an amusement park where a circus entrepreneur, Ernie Jamestown is showcasing the Devil in one of his freak shows. This is tight, humorous writing. Bukowski at his best!

(3) Maja Thurup

This is an unusual direction for Bukowski. It is about a lady, Hester Adams who returns from South America with a cannibal, Maja Thurup, who no girl from his village would accept. Apparently “he had torn two girls to death with his instrument. One had been entered from the front, the other from the rear. No matter.” What follows is another crazy fling into Bukowsi’s overhung madness.

(2) Love for $17.50

This is a surreal story about Robert Wilkinson who falls in love with a mannequin he calls Stella. Despite having a couple of girlfriends, Robert prefers Stella’s company and falls in love with her. Bukowski makes a shrewd, highly entertaining commentary on contemporary relationships between men and women.

(     (1) No Way to Paradise

One of Bukowski’s best ever short stories! Hank is in a bar and meets Dawn who keeps four three inch people in her purse who bitch and moan and fuck each other when hot. As they do it they make Dawn and Hank hot as well. Another satirical, and highly amusing take on the ins and outs of relationships.

Buy the book here: http://www.amazon.com/South-No-North-Stories-Buried/dp/0876851898

New Release: Stories by Charles Bukowski The Bell Tolls for No One. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2015 (308 pages). Edited with an Introduction by David Stephen Calonne.

This is the fourth book of collected writings published by City Lights and edited by Professor Calonne. It follows Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008), Absence of the Hero (2010) and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns (2011). The latest pocket-sized volume consists of 44 stories, most of which first appeared in L.A. Free Press as part of Bukowski’s iconic Notes of a Dirty Old Man newspaper column.

The full breakdown is as follows according to the bibliography at the end of the book:

#	Originally published	Year
25	L.A. Free Press	1972-1976
4	Fling	1971-1972
4	Oui	1984-1985
3	Hustler	1978-1985
2	Open City	1967-1968
2	Nola Express	1971-1972
2	unpublished	1948, 1979
1	Kauri	1966
1	Congress	1967

The Bell Tolls for No One takes its name from the last short story in the book, first published in Oui magazine. In the story nothing goes right for Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego. He is mistakenly abducted by thugs, hand-cuffed, savagely bashed and his left ear blown off. Left in the woods and still hand-cuffed, a wild dog sets on him. The story ironically ends, “I ran forward, kicked out and missed, fell to my side, rolled over just in time as the flash of fangs ripped the quiet air, I got to my feet and faced the thing again, thinking, this must happen all the time to everybody…one way or the other…” The title is an obvious allusion to Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of Bukowski’s literary heroes.  In the case of the people who inhabit Bukowski’s world, nothing falls into place for them.

This collection is better than I imagined but because Bukowski spent most of life writing and rewriting about key moments in his life, you get the impression that you have read many of these stories before. As Calonne points out in his fine Introduction (see the link to it below), “Several of the stories included in this volume demonstrate how he worked and reworked his material. He creates the  same narrative anew; he doesn’t copy, but starts over. He is always telling his autobiography but selecting different details, reinventing instead of rewriting.” He uses the example of the excellent short story ‘An Affair of Very Little Importance’ about Mercedes which appears in a different version in his novel Women. The story ‘I Just Write Poetry So I Can Go to Bed With Girls’ appears in a Dirty Old Man column in this volume as well.

Many of the stories are finely crafted portraits or focussed on dysfunctional relationships, including ‘Dancing Nina’, ‘Save the World’, ‘The Lady with the Legs’ and several other untitled pieces from the ‘Notes of a Dirt Old Man’ archives. In his Introduction Calonne emphases that a central element of Bukowski’s content and style is to poke fun at the absurdity of romantic love and the sexual politics of the time, “Message parlours, a pornographer engaging in late-night discussions with his wife, adult bookshops, older women picking up younger men: the entire panoply of the fading sexual revolution is held up to satire and ridicule.”

Also of great interest is the inclusion of The Way the Dead Love (pages 29-58) the beginnings of a novel John Martin urged Bukowski to write in 1966. Several chapters were published in magazines, including this five- part excerpt which first appeared in Congress in 1967.

Arguably the best stories in the collection are those in which Bukowski temporarily abandons his over-written life story and focuses more on dredging up the gold of his febrile imagination. The satirical ‘A Day in the Life of an Adult Bookstore Clerk’, the investigations into criminal behaviour in ‘Break-In’ and ‘Fly the Friendly Skies’ immediately come to mind. The best & craziest short story in the collection is the Cold War masterpiece ‘A Dirty Trick on God.’ It begins with Harry Greb, an assembly line packer sitting in a bathtub drinking a beer. He farts and then the bubbles rise to form a “sponge thing with seaweed arms, blue eyes, blond hair.” This is an extremely funny story with a message. You may be able to read it on Google Books.

Where to buy the book. Also find the Introduction by David Stephen Calonne and pages 1-38 here:

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100311630

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Charles Bukowski HOT WATER MUSIC. Black Sparrow Press, 1983 (221 pages).

I have closely read this collection of 36 short stories twice over the last year and consider it an excellent and under-rated book in the Bukowski canon. It was first published in 1983 and is sandwiched between his novel Ham on Rye (1982) and his poetry collection War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984).

You can learn a lot about writing by studying this book. How to pare it down. How to create a credible working class or down & out classic. How to spice it up through a romp or fisticuff. How to make your story unpredictable and to engage the reader's imagination. No doubt you need to have the creative juices of stories coursing thru your veins of experience to begin with.

Here is a brief synopsis of some of the better stories:

YOU KISSED LILLY. While watching television, Margaret, a 50 year old is reminded of Lilly who kissed her husband Theodore five years ago. She pulls out a gun and shoots him in the chest. They have a domestic argument as the blood drains out of him.

DECLINE AND FALL. At the Hungry Diamond Mel relates to the bartender Carl a bizarre story told to her by Al which involves a couple who likes strangers to watch them have sex and which also later involves the cannibalism of a hitch-hiker.

HAVE YOU READ PIRANDELLO? The narrator Henry Chinaski is forced to move out of his girlfriend’s large comfortable house and he hilariously responds to a variety of share accommodation ads.

STROKES TO NOWHERE. Tony drops off his wife Dolly at the airport. As Tony and his friend Meg finally are doing it “slowly and steadily like the arm of an oil pump. Flub, flub, flub, flub,” Meg’s brother Damion materializes on the top of the bed and chastises his sister.

SCUM GRIEF. Chinaski attends a poetry reading of the poet Victor Valoff with his girlfriend Vicki. As Valoff reads his obscure stuff Chinaski translates what he means in a hilarious, punishingly satirical way.

A MAN WHO LOVED ELEVATORS. This is a sexually explicit story about Harry who likes banging anonymous women in lifts.

TURKEYNECK MORNING. This is a third person story which poignantly examines the falling out of love between the horny Barney and the recalcitrant Shirley.

HOW TO GET PUBLISHED. This is a loosely veiled attempt to fictionalize his visit to the Owens in New Orleans who were the publishers of Bukowski's first major book.

THE DEATH OF THE FATHER I. Great opening line, “My father’s funeral was a cold hamburger.” This is Bukowski’s story of hate for his old man. He fucks his old man’s girlfriend Maria after the funeral.

BROKEN MERCHANDISE. Frank, a shipping clerk, has an unsatisfactory relationship with his girlfriend Fran. A moment of road rage provides him with “a small victory after a horrible day”.

HOME RUN. Benny beats a barkeep with a baseball bat who short-changes him forty bucks.

FOOLING MARIE. Ted picks up a slender, big breasted woman at the race track. She has some surprises for him.

As you can see from some of these crazy storylines, Bukowski is a highly imaginative short story writer. Although he often writes about his personal experiences, his best stuff begins realistically but then morphs off to other realms which are more difficult to peg down in a rational way.

It is interesting to note that in his recent book Charles Bukowski (2012), David Stephen Calonne does not mention the collection, nor does Barry Miles in his Charles Bukowski (2005).Howard Sounes in his excellent Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life only makes a passing reference to the book in one sentence.

Find 66 pages of Hot Water Music here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0876855966/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0876855966&linkCode=as2&tag=charlebukowsa-20