- Hardcover: 350 pages
- Publisher: Black Sparrow Press; New edition edition (Jun 5 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0876855583
- ISBN-13: 978-0876855584
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 14.7 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 440 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,980,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Charles Bukowski's fourth novel, Ham on Rye, is the semi-autobiographical story of the early years of his alter ego Henry Chinaski. It is a finely written and honest account of the painful childhood of a boy marked out from his peers. Regularly beaten by his father, Chinaski is shown growing through his difficult and violent adolescence (struck with the worst case of acne his doctors have ever seen) through to the first jobs he can't and won't hold down. In this moving story of growing up Bukowski disciplines his muscular, concentrated writing and creates a novel that distils his poetry into the finest full-length piece of prose that he ever wrote. Bukowski is often good but in Ham on Rye he's great.
Sadly, best known as the alcoholic inspiration for the film Barfly (an experience he reflected on in his book Hollywood), it is as a poet, rather than a drunk, that Bukowski should be best remembered. His bitter, caustic, direct, humane, damaged poetry reflects a life dominated by poverty and booze. His poetry stretches over many, many volumes but Bukowski also wrote great novels: all of them have many faults but the first four books he wrote shine for similar reasons. Post Office and Factotum both dissect, quite brilliantly, the life of an angry, poor man forced to do mindless jobs, pushed around and considered mindless by the fools who force him to do them. Women, as Roddy Doyle points out in his short introduction, continues the themes but focuses on the numerous women who share his hero's bed and bottle. --Mark Thwaite --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
'Very funny, very sad, and despite its self-congratulatory tone, honest in most of the right places. In many ways, Bukowski may have been the perfect writer to describe post-war southern California - a land of wide, flat spaces with nothing worth seeing, so you might as well vanish into yourself. In an age of conformity, Bukowski wrote about the people nobody wanted to be: the ugly, the selfish, the lonely, the mad.' - The Observer
--This text refers to the
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The first thing I remember is being under something. Read the first page
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The first thing I remember is being under something. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
bukowski's finest,
By
This review is from: Ham On Rye (Paperback)
sure, some might say this book lacks something, but it certainly isn't writing, and i'm not one of the people who thinks it's lacking anything at all. one of the finest books bukowski ever published, tells his story of growing up with an abusive father and a mother who seemed like she didn't really care.i finished this book in one day, laughing and shaking my head at some of the things bukowski had to go through. this book is more polished than post office, factotum, et all, and it's still a very fun read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Ham On Rye: A Novel (Paperback)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bukowski as "Survivor",
By Tom Hackert (Woodland, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ham On Rye (Paperback)
I didn't know what to expect when I picked up Ham on Rye by Bukowski. I'd read some assorted poems and short stories of his that I found amusing because of their bluntness and coarseness. I found that Ham On Rye was much in the same vein: that is, the story of a non-comformist who has to pay the price in America for not selling out and becoming just another salesman or suit. Bukowski needed to follow his own music. This book is obviously autobiographical, and it depicts his rough and sad childhood: his abusive father who wouldn't cut him any slack, his skin condition that pock-marked his face and made him feel like an outcast, his alienation from school and his classmates, his alienation from most of America and the values America holds most dear: being the "alpha dog," the big "winner." Bukowski in effect is a foreigner in his own land, a socially isolated individual who escapes the cruelty of people by eventually becoming a writer and indulging in drink -- while longing for a poetry that our banal consumer society tries to squash. I love this book. It's an easy-to-read and very personal novel, which would probably be marketed today as a "memoir." I know Bukowski is NOT read in college and that's because he's generally "anti-New Yorker," anti-understatement. He's the John Belushi (think of Pluto in Animal House) of literature. His characters WILL COME OUT TALKING, LIKE THIS!!.. Reading Bukowski is an intimate experience, like reading the work of a friend or watching a friend's home-movie. He's largely a self-taught artist so his work is sometimes rough, sometimes over-the-top, sometimes sloppy -- but always full of humor and always largely entertaining and loads of fun. This is my first Bukowski novel, but it certainly won't be my last! So crack open a brew, shut off that stupid TV, kick back in your dirty shorts and read Ham on Rye. I also agree with the reviewer who recommended "THE LOSERS' CLUB: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, another lively, funny novel that I could relate to -- in which the main character, a failed poet, talks to Charles Bukowski.
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