Ham on Rye: A Novel

Ham on Rye is a brilliant little novel about adolescence. While this story has been told a thousand times before, the narrative voice of our acne'd outsider protagonist is incredibly refreshing. When one considers that many of the other narratives of the era tend to be self-affirming urban adventure stories that take themselves too seriously, Bukowski's narrative shows us a semi-autobiographical, self-deprecating, cynical life that’s rife with alcohol, disappointment, and fistfights. Bukowski's boozy world is one where the outsider is the king protagonist of his own destiny, and it is one that is probably shared with a great deal of young men in their American upbringing. His dysfunctional family echoed my own experiences (even though I didn't necessarily have physical punishment, the emotional aspect was spot on). His feelings on his own existence as an animal (and of course, I didn't have the acne problems, but I have myriad others that gave me outsider social status) were real. His experiences with young women, school, and trying to make it against all odds professionally and educationally were very familiar to me. While Bukowski may be offensive to most readers, the plain fact of the matter is that his views on life and adolescent sexuality are the exact same ones I had in my youth. What is the most memorable is the manner in which he tells the story. He doesn't self-edit. He doesn't leave anything out. He tells us everything about his experiences as they happen. This isn't entirely something that should be described as offensive, but real. A real experience. What it is really like. And while many of us want to find some parochial editorializing when we read, the best part about Bukowski is that that is simply not in his novels. I first read his work when I was eighteen or nineteen years old. Now that I am thirty-five, picking up HOR again has left me with a reading experience that was much different since I have had a great deal more life experience and perspective. Looking at this book today, I have found a hilarious, beautiful, tragic, and exciting narrative about living as an outsider in America. I absolutely loved it – more than I did the first time – and look forward to revisiting a couple more (Post Office and Women) in the coming year.

This is like reading Faulkner, without all of the fuss, with more fun, and perhaps without the same levels of philosophy and psychology. It's arty without being hoity-toity about it all. A simple language is used, and bombs go off without much fanfare. It's astounding in the way that it mixes observations with inner thoughts from the main character. From the very first paragraph: <blockquote>The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg, I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under there, I liked being under there. It must have been in Germany. I must have been between one and two years old. It was 1922. I felt good under the table. Nobody seemed to know that I was there. There was sunlight upon the rug and on the legs of the people. I liked the sunlight. The legs of the people were not interesting, not like the tablecloth which hung down, not like the table leg, not like the sunlight.</blockquote> The book is strewn with subtle and horrendously beautiful writings about the patriarchal, capitalistic stuff that happen: <blockquote>There were continual fights. The teachers didn’t seem to know anything about them. And there was always trouble when it rained. Any boy who brought an umbrella to school or wore a raincoat was singled out. Most of our parents were too poor to buy us such things. And when they did, we hid them in the bushes. Anybody seen carrying an umbrella or wearing a raincoat was considered a sissy. They were beaten after school. David’s mother had him carry an umbrella whenever it was the least bit cloudy.</blockquote> The above shows how this book, published in 1982, hasn't really changed much over most of Western "society" when considering nowaday literature like Édouard Louis‘s “The End of Eddy“, which was published in 2014. I love the way that things are written about, in a quite stoic and existentialistic fashion: <blockquote>He walked over and slapped me on the ear, knocking me to the floor. The woman got up and ran out of the house and my father went after her. The woman leaped into my father’s car, started it and drove off down the street. It happened very quickly. My father ran down the street after her and the car. “EDNA! EDNA, COME BACK!” My father actually caught up with the car, reached into the front seat and grabbed Edna’s purse. Then the car speeded up and my father was left with the purse. “I knew something was going on,” my mother told me. “So I hid in the car trunk and I caught them together. Your father drove me back here with that horrible woman. Now she’s got his car.” My father walked back with Edna’s purse. “Everybody into the house!” We went inside and my father locked me in the bedroom and my mother and father began arguing. It was loud and very ugly. Then my father began beating my mother. She screamed and he kept beating her. I climbed out a window and tried to get in the front door. It was locked. I tried the rear door, the windows. Everything was locked. I stood in the backyard and listened to the screaming and the beating. Then the beating and the screaming stopped and all I could hear was my mother sobbing. She sobbed a long time. It gradually grew less and less and then she stopped.</blockquote> There are some funny, and a lot of tragic sides to all of this. While reading the book, I often wondered whether the character caused his problems, or was just affected by them, unable to avoid it all; naturally, it all depends on from where you're standing. The book reminded me a lot of Camus's "The Stranger", but that may be due to the existentialistic nature of that book, which I love. All in all, this book makes me want to read more of Bukowski's books. This book will linger in the back of my head for quite some time, I think.

This was my first foray into Bukowski so I figured, why not start with what may be regarded as his best. My expectations were low if I had any at all, in honesty I didn't know what to expect, for someone who is spoken about, we never once mentioned his name is high school or in college literature classes, and I suppose within a few pages it is easy to figure out why. Sadly, those who would protect us from ourselves nearly kept me from one of the true (if perhaps a bit colorful) voices of the last few generations. Yes is it absolutely true that the writing or the voice is crude and it absolutely is not PC. But the fact that it is not PC is not some conscious political statement, it simply is. This is the sad, matter-of-fact voice of a child who has faced a hard life at a hard time and through that we get to hear his actual voice without a filter. Our inner voices are not filtered. Half the time young Henry said the things he did he didn't even know what he was saying exactly. He would sit and observe alcoholics and broken people and wonder at the color of their eyes. Until discovering sex he would be offered the chance to look at pretty girl's panties and take note of how they were clean. As he was repeatedly struck by his father he would note how beautiful the bathroom was the moment his father left. Some have called this book hilarious and I have to admit that it one of the few books where I sat and laughed at the audacious statements of Henry but make no mistake this is not a hilarious book, it is sad, and harsh and rough but perfectly so.

For some reason there is a line of ink on the cover. it’s decent in terms of its condition

`Ham on Rye' - the ham is America, in practice LA, and the rye(bread) is Germany, his country of origin - is generally considered Bukowski's finest novel. It is an account of the childhood and early manhood of one Hank Chinaski, Bukowski's alter ego. Hank is raised in a small town in the depth of the 1930's depression. His father is out of work for most of the time, but desperate to keep up appearances, and his mother is a characterless soul who just supports her husband. The latter is also a sadist, who regularly viciously beats Hank for trivial `errors'. But the novel is only semi-autobiographical, because in fact Bukowski's parents had a normal marriage and his father was not the monster portrayed in the book. What is factual is the serious disfiguring skin condition that Bukowski suffered and is mirrored in the acne suffered by Hank Chinaski. This isolates Chinaski from his classmates, and he is also bullied because of his Germanic origins. He takes refuge in reading in the local library and dreaming of becoming a writer, but he realizes that his alienation is deeper, not just with his family and school, but with America in general and its values. He has no desire to have a steady job, marry and have children, or any of the other things that most American's hold dear. He even flirts in a minor way with fascism and shows no inclination to enlist even when, at the end of the book, Pearl Harbour is bombed and one of his few school friends, now a marine, rushes back to his base. Eventually he pays the price, seemingly willingly, and descends to drink, and frequent personal violence. The story overall is sad and depressing, but there are many small pen sketches of people and incidents, often humorous, sometimes moving, that makes one see that Chinaski is a complex character and not simply a nihilist. The writing is direct, sometimes raw, and often coarse, but is just right for the situations described. In his late 50s, after some years `in the wilderness', Bukowski became famous and rich from his writings, and although still consuming copious amounts of alcohol and changing partners regularly, achieved a more settled life, always believing that he had not `sold out'. One would like to think that Hank Chinaski eventually also found a haven via his chosen route, and similarly not `selling out'.

In the first parts of the book, when Henry still had 6-8 years, the story sound a little unrealistic and over sexualized in some occasions. But while the caracter grows up it turns to be an interesting topic. The discover of this sexual part of life by kids in the beginning of a premature puberty. But it's aborded without any idealization, in a disturbingly crude and realistic way. Somehow, I identify my teenager self with little Chinasky, and I think that probably every man do too, what makes me sick (like I sad, it's disturbing). In general, the book is about Henry's childhood and adolescence, always with that disturbingly crude and realistic tone. It made me reflect of this period of life in so many ways and, consequently, about society, power and culture. Some subjects really got my attention, like: poverty; paternal violence; education system; sexism, especially the men's side (this because, as it's a first person narrative, every woman is described in an explicitly deformed way, so we never really know what they are coming through, but, despite that, we start seeing the sick culture that makes male kids and teenagers represent women in such deformed ways); something that we normally reduce to "bullying", but the book exposes as an issue of socialization, as the lack of a feeling of belonging to a group, as being rejected by the ones around you; and, as a result of this environment, loneliness. Loneliness as a way to survive, as closing yourself to the world. The sexism is something you can really see all the time. It seems like that isn't a relationship between a male and a female that is healthy. To the eyes of this boy, women are nothing but flesh. He actually uses this word all the time, normally followed by white (white flesh), in a very racist way. And I don't think that's tell us about the author (maybe it does, but I don't think that's the point). Again, I think the interesting thing is that it tells us about the way sexism get in the heads of males so young. The only time a female gets attention in the story is when she's hot and pleasuring a male, and that look disturbingly close to the reality. All interactions of males and females just doesn't look right in this book, what forces you to reflect about this subject. I don't know if I could even read this if I wore a woman, but, for a male, i think it's a painful true that could really help someone to look to his own life, see sexism expliced and that it isn't bad only for woman. The first healthy interaction Henry have with a woman is when a nurse takes care of him in the hospital. According to him, she "was the first person to give me my sympathy. It felt strange". He compares her to other womans he talks about during the book, despite all of them had his attention for being hot and this nurse isn't attracting. She got Henry for being nice. And in this occasion the boy shows that his representing of woman is of a sexual toy, saying that she wasn't hot but "there was something about her. She wasn't constantly thinking of being a woman". It seems to me that, the truth is, for the first time, Henry saw a woman not as "hot flesh", but as a human being, that's why it seems that she wasn't trying to be a woman. It also made me reflect so much about poverty, capitalism, consumerism and stuff. Henry is taught since ever that to win in life he needs to be a good consumer, to be part of the economic system. That's why people really exists. "Wealth meant victory and victory was the only reality". His father had a strategy: "the family structure. Victory over adversity through the family. He believed in it. Take the family, mix with God and Country, add the ten-hour day and you had what it needs". But Henry never felt like it. "I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one don't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. [...] I would rather be a dish washer, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep" (p. 192). In one of his thoughts Henry asks: "what were doctors, lawyers, scientists? They were just men who allowed themselves to be deprived of their freedom to think and act as individuals" (p. 274). The character has so many problems related to self esteem, due all the reject received from life. To society's parameters he was bad in everything. Even his appearance, full of acnes, is repugnant in everybody's eyes. If on the one hand he felt sick about society, in the other he introjected that when he looked to himself: "I was like some jungle animal". In the story he deal with the paradox of feeling like he's the only one who see how sick life and people are (what makes he feel like he is a illuminated human between a bunch of idiots), but, at the same time, of feeling sad because of rejecting. So, one time he feels like he know what nobody knows, the other he thinks the opposite: "everybody knew something I didn't know" (p. 194), like talking and dancing. He tries to respond the reject of everyone rejecting the whole world back, but you can clearly see that he's in pain. This book is really great. You may get a little depressed and start drinking more then usual.

Obviously a man of independent thought, Henry Chinaski the main character and Mr. Bukowski's alter ego suffers the travails of an abusive father and anemic mother who enables his father to continue to bully all those over whom he has power. The consequences for Henry are disastrous. Rather than praise the boy for cutting the family's lawn, Henry is beaten should one strand of grass be longer than the rest. Any chance the boy might find refuge from the cruelty at he experiences at home, is dashed when his adolescence brings with him a debilitating case of acne. But, Henry is tough. His childhood has made him a survivor. He fights one of the preppy boys with whom he attended high school, and, at first, gets pummeled but, eventually, the preppy tires and Henry proceeds to give a thorough beating. A survivor. Ham on Rye is a compelling novel that had me engrossed from beginning to end. Well worth, the few hours required for reading.

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