Charles Bukowski The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way (2018)
At the risk of becoming repetitive, today's bewildering Goodreads dunce is an individual who regards this book as representing the point at which Bukowski turned himself into a stereotype - as he puts it - seemingly referring to Chuck's emphasis on drinking, shagging, and manual labour - although the latter is referred to only in passing in The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way. Naturally, I had to ask, because the review in question read a lot like Charles Bukowski keeps talking about women's tits and how he's definitely not gay because he was a bricklayer which is really, really boring actually. Thankfully this wasn't quite what the reviewer meant, so far as I could tell, but his suggestion of Bukowski playing up to a certain image seemed kind of redundant given that the author actually states this in several places; while Chuck's purportedly macho pose is, I would suggest, somewhat undermined by the fact of his spending most of the book writing poetry while listening to classical music, activities which do nothing to suggest we're dealing with a sort of Los Angeles Gary Bushell here.
Never mind. I'm sure the man himself often had to contend with much worse.
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way collects a series of columns written for various magazines and newspapers, some fiction, prefaces to other people's books, and a couple of interviews. Bukowski is mostly on form.
At the risk of becoming repetitive, today's bewildering Goodreads dunce is an individual who regards this book as representing the point at which Bukowski turned himself into a stereotype - as he puts it - seemingly referring to Chuck's emphasis on drinking, shagging, and manual labour - although the latter is referred to only in passing in The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way. Naturally, I had to ask, because the review in question read a lot like Charles Bukowski keeps talking about women's tits and how he's definitely not gay because he was a bricklayer which is really, really boring actually. Thankfully this wasn't quite what the reviewer meant, so far as I could tell, but his suggestion of Bukowski playing up to a certain image seemed kind of redundant given that the author actually states this in several places; while Chuck's purportedly macho pose is, I would suggest, somewhat undermined by the fact of his spending most of the book writing poetry while listening to classical music, activities which do nothing to suggest we're dealing with a sort of Los Angeles Gary Bushell here.
Never mind. I'm sure the man himself often had to contend with much worse.
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way collects a series of columns written for various magazines and newspapers, some fiction, prefaces to other people's books, and a couple of interviews. Bukowski is mostly on form.
Oh, by the way, if you want to get one angle on a minor writer, it is one who throws a party or gets one thrown for him when his book comes out.
Even Hell Yes, the Hydrogen Bomb - seemingly an experiment in non-linear pseudo Burroughsian narrative - yields the occasional gem.
Political fervour is the blight of the young. History is too long—the tail swings the dog.
Nevertheless, taken as a whole the collection is a bit of a slog. Much of the word count is taken up with musing upon the act of writing and the life of a writer, with unfortunate emphasis on poetry; which is interesting up to a point, or may have been when broken up into weekly or monthly instalments, but assembled between just two covers becomes a mammoth helping of what is essentially the same thing.
Excepting Bukowski, Billy Childish, Bill Lewis and no-one else I can think of off the top of my head right now - although I'm sure there must be someone I've overlooked - I really find it hard to care about poetry. Oddly, Bukowski feels the same way.
Probably the greatest thing here is the theme song, an essay amounting to writing advice for aspiring authors, and that advice is to go and spend an afternoon at the race track betting on the geegees. Almost all writing advice will be bullshit by definition, but this is pretty solid. To be fair, most of The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way is pretty solid, but possibly not all of it works served on the same plate.
Probably the greatest thing here is the theme song, an essay amounting to writing advice for aspiring authors, and that advice is to go and spend an afternoon at the race track betting on the geegees. Almost all writing advice will be bullshit by definition, but this is pretty solid. To be fair, most of The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way is pretty solid, but possibly not all of it works served on the same plate.
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