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Abstract
Charles Bukowski devoted his writing career to turning his own life into poetry and prose. In poems and stories about his experiences as one of the working poor in post war America, and in those depicting his experiences as a writer of the American underground, Bukowski represents himself as both a literary and social outsider. Bukowski expresses an alternative literary aesthetic through his fictional persona, Henry Chinaski, who struggles to overcome his suffering in a world he finds absurd, and who embarks on a quest for freedom in his youth to which he remains committed all his life.
This thesis examines Charles Bukowski's autobiographical fiction with a
specific emphasis on five novels and one collection of short stories. In the novels, Post Office (1970), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982) and Hollywood (1989), and in a number of short stories in the collection Hot Water Music (1983), Bukowski explores different periods of Chinaski s life with a dark humour, revealing links between Chinaski s struggle with the absurd and those aspects comprising Bukowski s alternative aesthetic. The thesis focuses on such aspects of Bukowski s art
as the uncommercial nature of his publishing history, his strong emphasis on literary simplicity, the appearance of the grotesque and Bukowski s obsession with nonconformity, drinking and sex. These aspects illuminate the distinctive nature of Bukowski s art and its purpose, which is the transformation of an ordinary life into literature.
This thesis argues that Bukowski illuminates possibilities that exist for
individuals to create an identity for themselves through aesthetic self-expression. The thesis traces the development of Chinaski's non-conformist personality from Ham on Rye, based on Bukowski's youth in Los Angeles during the Depression, to Hollywood, Bukowski's ironic portrayal of Chinaski's brush with the commercial film industry. Through meeting the many challenges he faced throughout his life with defiance, honesty and an irreverent sense of humour, Bukowski invites readers to identify with his alternative world view. The thesis argues this particular aspect of his writing constitutes his most valuable contribution to twentieth century American fiction.