Book Review: Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski at his rawest

Charles Bukowski doesn’t pretend to be a saint. He’s more of a rock-and-roll type of person that has surrendered to his vices and even has that hint of proudness of his shortcomings. Heck, he literally called himself a dirty old man, which is fitting with all the misogyny and perverted comments.

We all know that type of old man, a blunt and sarcastic one who have seen it all and tired of all the bullshit. Which makes for a hilarious companion, where we tend to stick around near him and cannot wait to see what he will say or do next, but never want him to be anywhere near our children.

This book is exactly that, a series of few dozens short essays that represent Bukowski’s most mischievous observations on society, some fictions, some weirdest true stories, some blurry between real or not, but mostly the greatest hits from the collection of his underground newspaper columns with the same name – Notes of a Dirty Old Man – for the Open City newspaper (which prompted the FBI to keep a file on him).

It is part autobiography, part crude comedy filled with alcohol, women and bizarre adventures, written in a 1960s style of conversation.

The book serves to show that the immortal writers with their masterpieces are humans after all, and sometimes their life’s story are even more amusing than their work. Which makes the book weirdly enjoyable, because it is so damn uncensored and raw, a blend of honesty and bat-shit crazy that makes a brilliant read.

The long backstories that leads to the phrase “I once lost a million dollar to a Japanese fisherman” or “eating a small animal with a tiny asshole” or “cold shit, warm shit, it’s still shit” are some of the standouts. Chapter 33 in particular is superb, filled with one liners inspired when he was drunk. Lines such as:

• When love becomes a command, hatred can become a pleasure.
• If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win.
• Beautiful thoughts and beautiful women never last.
• You can cage a tiger but you never sure he’s broken, men are easier.
• If you wanna know where God is, ask a drunk.
• There aren’t any angels in the foxholes.
• No pain means the end of feeling. Each of our joys is a bargain with the devil.
• The difference between art and life, is that art is more bearable.
• I rather hear about a life American bum than a dead Greek God.
• There is nothing as boring as the truth.
• The well-balanced individual is insane.
• Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.
• A brave man lacks imagination, cowardice is usually caused by lack of proper diet.
• Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing.
• When men rule governments men won’t need governments, until then we are screwed.
• An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way. An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.
• Every time I go to a funeral I feel as if I had eaten a puffed wheatgerm.
• Dripping faucets, farts of passion, flat tires are all sadder than death.
• If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.
• Hospitals are where they attempt to kill you without explaining why.
• The cold and measured cruelty of the American hospitals is not caused by doctors who are overworked or who have gotten used to and bored with death. It is caused by doctors who are paid too much for doing too little. And who are admired by the ignorant as witch men with cure when most of the time they don’t know their own arsehair from celery shreds.
• Before a Metropolitan Daily exposes an evil it takes its own pulse.

But one line from chapter 12 haunts me the most, until chapter 42 and even after I finished the book. It is one of the more serious parts of the book, on war and politics: “Revolution sounds very romantic, you know, but it ain’t. it’s blood and guts and madness; it’s little kids killed who get in the way, it’s little kids who don’t understand what the fuck is going on. it’s your whore, your wife ripped in the belly with a bayonet and then raped in the a** while you watch. it’s men torturing men who used to laugh at Mickey Mouse cartoons.”