0
The novel is written from the author’s closer to life, almost biographical alter ego Henry Chinaski and Women traverses the landscape of Chinaksi’s sexual and emotional encounters with women during his time as an author.
The novel sometimes borders among the erotic and Bukowski describes these sexual encounters in great detail.
Women has unrelenting pace since it is broken down into short chapters and the true turmoil of Bukowski descent into depression, eroticism and indifference is enticing.
Chinaksi has no shame in presenting himself as a satyriasis while presenting the woman within his life as disruptive.
His unflinching narration makes for much crude yet insightful perspective. At one point Chinaski boasts his revelry by saying “If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute. Since I had been born a man I craved women constantly. The Lower the better”. This has been viewed by many as misogynistic hub-bub yet Bukowksi shows how the character Chinaski is dependent on women for stability and inspiration.
In hindsight most of the female characters within the novel become almost angelic in comparison to Bukowski. He often says “she was a good soul”. His hedonistic ways eventually get the better of him and Chinaski ruptures into tears when counting his losses. He feels empty by the very end of the novel and his frequent airport visits become more and more sedated through alcohol.
Both alcohol and women are the two primary factors of the Bukowski chic and they lend perfectly hand in hand within this novel to represent a poisoned conscious. Yet, these excerpts of forgotten nights and lost loves are exceptionally human and there honesty demands respect from the reader. His honesty makes it seem much more personal and while Chinaski is warped in mentality there is a strange wisdom to his pros.
Bukowski is the opposition to the bourgeois. He in fact does not even reference it as a two finger to the literary world he was adorned in. Yet that very spirit is what makes Bukowski so accessible. If you were un-academic you could relate to him and yet if you were academic you were too intrigued to not try.
The man is the loud, ruckus, drinking, smoking and screwing contradiction of the literary world and the subject of women is no different in this novel. It is just one man’s interpretation and is not to be taken seriously. He is just a man who doesn’t want to be thrown under the bus.
“Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.”