Women: A Novel
by Charles Bukowski
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles BukowskiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-27
ISBN: 0061177598
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Ecco
Book Reviews of Women: A Novel
Book Review: "I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them..."
Summary: 3 Stars
So claims (p. 227) Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's alter-ego protagonist of Women. "I could invent men in my mind," Chinaski continues, "because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them."
One of the many perplexities about reading Bukowski is that one never quite knows where Chinaski the alter-ego ends and Chinaski the fictional character begins. But regardless of where the truth lies, these two sentences seem to provide the ironic keystone of Women. In it, Chinaski the author, middle-aged, gap-toothed, bloated belly, pasty white skin, usually drunk and rarely pleasant, beds woman after woman in improbable numbers and kinds. Yet for all his womanizing, Chinaski never seems to be able to write about women with any insight or depth. There's no interiority to them. But then, there's no interiority to Chinaski either. He writes about himself with the same objective distance with which he writes about his bed partners (I almost slipped up and wrote "lovers"). At best, all he can muster up is a juvenile sentimentality when writing about Lydia, the manic woman whose antics open the novel.
If Chinaski is primarily a fictional character, then Bukowski is poking some deliciously ironic fun at his protagonist's blindness. If Chinaski is primarily autobiographical, then Bukowski is either poking fun at his own blindness or is too myopic to notice it. In either case, though, the novel's plotless and tedious description of Chinaski's multiple conquests wears thin after the first 100 or so pages.
There are times when Bukowski's philosophy of writing (voiced through Chinaski on page 194)--"I just exist. Then later I try to remember and write some of it down"--works. But for the most part, his best prose (for example, in Ham on Rye) happens when he drops this weary pretense and shows some sympathetic connection with his characters. Otherwise, his stories are merely one-damn-thing-after-another chronicles. This, I suspect, reflects Bukowski's take on life. But it makes for dull reading after the initial novelty wears off.
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