Rebels Without Applause- Charles Bukowski
In this new series, I cover brave musicians, writers, and artists who weren’t afraid to go against the establishment, buck the system, and create art that infuriated and enthralled many.
The great Ron Swanson once said (Yes, I’m opening with a Parks & Rec reference), “Don’t start chasing applause and acclaim. That way lies madness.”
The musicians and writers I’m detailing with this series didn’t give a damn about applause or accolades. In fact, they loved it when they pissed people off. To them, rightfully so, it meant they stood for something.
From infuriating the feminists to crashing a White House luncheon (stay tuned for my article on Eartha Kitt), these artists lived rebellious lives, which is what one needs to do in order to create art worth a damn.
Ayn Rand, possibly one of the world’s most controversial writers (and one of my favorites here at Freedom Journal), had this to say about creators:
“Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current.”
One of the objectives I work to accomplish at FJ is writing about creators of all kinds who inspire us, who renew passion within us, and show the world that man wasn’t meant to walk through life with a bent spine, gazing down at his toes. He was meant to walk upright, strong spine and eyes gazing upwards, towards a sky filled with as many possibilities as his mind can come up with and stubborn will can execute.
To remind you that obedience is not virtuous (no matter how many times authority figures try to scare you into believing it is), and rebellion paired with creation in the hands of man produces divinity right here on Earth, here is the first installment in a series covering anti-establishment musicians and writers who weren’t afraid to give the middle finger to the powers that be.
The Whole World Or Nothing
Charles Bukowski, famous for his gut-punch poetry, once said he wrote for the defeated, the demented, and the depraved. If you’ve never had to become a monster to beat a monster in your life, this declaration could be a turnoff. But if you’ve ever been through it, I mean really through it, those words feel reassuring, like he’s bringing you home.
When he wasn’t enraging women’s rights groups or establishment literary magazines, editors were pierced in the bullseye line of fire of Bukowski’s metaphorical dart board.
“Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.”
Remarking in interviews that editors like to put words in cages, Bukowski’s disdain for the profession is understandable. Editors often sanitized his work to make it more palatable for the masses. Even his longtime editor, John Martin, had a heavy hand with reworking the poet’s manuscripts.
When editor Abel DeBritto searched through Bukowski’s archives after his death, he was astonished to find many poems that had been so altered from their original draft, it didn’t even sound like him.
“Instead of the love-it-or-hate-it but very recognizable voice of the “King of the Underground… Debritto found fluffy imagery and trite language laced throughout his posthumous poems.” (PBS)
In the ‘70s, the counterculture movement (hippies were another target for Bukowski) was still going strong with the last of the flower children left over from the late ‘60s. Despite experimental drug use, widespread birth control availability for the first time in the US, and a wave of serial killers targeting states from California to New York, somehow, Charles Bukowski was too offensive for readers.
While flowery language often graced the pages of poets associated with the romantic movement, and surrealist poets’ use of the written word made it hard to tell what the hell they were talking about period, Buk (one of his nicknames) unapologetically held up a mirror to reality.
Many of his works were autobiographical, unabashedly writing about the severe abuse he endured from his parents as a child. While he could have chosen to wallow in his experience, he used it to power his art, and turn himself into an almost mythical creature that plenty of wannabe poet-women decided to go to bed with (despite his label as a “misogynist”).
He didn’t reach international fame until he was in his 60s. He caught on in Europe before Americans began exploring his work. At the height of his career, more and more artists were fusing politics with their creations, taking on the role of “activist” when their poems, songs, or films weren’t strong enough to stand on their own without the help of a trendy “movement.”
As Bukowski became more well known, interviewers pried more and more into his apolitical-political views. After a series of interview questions left him annoyed, he replied in a High Times article:
“...I don’t have any politics. Why should I? It’s like having gallstones: It costs money to have them removed, so why have them?”
His refusal to become a figure closely associated with any type of literary school rubbed the establishment the wrong way:
“...people tend to get nervous about what I write, they tend to hate me. Some poets of the “establishment” here—I know they hate me. I feel their hate, and I think it’s good; it shows I am doing something.” (High Times)
Part of his disdain for the politically-charged artists of the ‘70s was that they were voluntarily stricken with what I call, Ivory Tower Syndrome—young kids who get to hide behind the safety of a university or suburb and selectively take on the struggle of whatever is trendy at the moment so they look like they’ve been victimized (they think this makes “good” art because their professors give them A’s).
The “esoteric” nature of so many creatives’ writing uninterested Bukowski. To him, an ivory tower is a death knell to an artist. Good writing stays “in the streets, not in the air.”
Bukowski didn’t write for the masses. He didn’t write to get in the good graces of professors. And he certainly didn’t write with the goal of being published in the latest popular literary magazine.
He bravely let his “pages do the screaming.”
When asked about how he manages line breaks and his writing style in regards to what critics look for when picking poetry for anthologies and magazines, he commented:
“Subconsciously, I guess, I am trying to make my poetry more and more bare, essential… This might give those critics vent to holler their dirty word “prose.” That’s what the critics are there for: to complain. I don’t write for the critics; I write for that little thing that sits just in and behind my forehead… Line breaks? The lines break themselves and I don’t know how.” (Clock Radio Magazine)
Buk was doggedly honest about his work, never falling prey to the inflated mindset so many writers adopt at the first sign of mainstream success. In regards to the body of work he would ultimately leave behind, he tackled the question with his trademark cheeky candor:
“I’d say that seventy-five percent of what I write is good; forty, forty-five percent is excellent; ten percent is immortal, and twenty-five percent is shit. Does it add up to one hundred?”
Some of Buk’s most enduring poetry collections include The Last Night of the Earth and Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. For an unadulterated edition of his posthumous work, check out Storm for the Living and the Dead, edited by Abel DeBritto.
If you haven’t already, subscribe below to receive my next Rebels Without Applause installment, detailing the afternoon “Santa Baby” singer Eartha Kitt brought the (White) House down with a legendary performance any liberty-lover will find awe-inspiring.
Sources:
https://hightimes.com/culture/high-times-greats-charles-bukowski/
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Peace, Love, and Liberty.
-Rebecca-