The book begins with Chinaski’s arrival in New Orleans with the cautious hope that “it was a new town. However, being located in the periphery actually allows him to take a disinterested look at the center and laugh heartily (or spit venomously, on certain occasions) at the absurdity of it. Chinaski’s struggle with addiction pushes him to the periphery – the dwelling ground of the ‘undesirable’ and ‘obsolete’ of the society. Chinaski’s loitering through the murky underbelly of the city streets becomes the metaphorical journey of an urban human being in search of meaning a journey that often ends in a nihilistic proclamation of godless-ness, yet the realization is tinged with a sense of deeply buried, dark humor. There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get outīut I’m too clever, I only let him out at night sometimesĮvery postmodern human being is perhaps nurturing this bluebird in their isolated, bubble-wrapped existence in the urban panopticon. An avid reader won’t miss the soul of the bluebird that Bukowski hides beneath his hard-hitting, minimalist style of prose: Yet, he is often touted as one of the greatest and most prolific American authors (in 1986, Time magazine called him a “poet laureate of American lowlife”). Bukowski’s ‘genre’ of grunge lit, often critiqued as an unabashed celebration of dirty realism, violence, sex and addiction, is influenced by his own experience of struggling with repeated rejection in his professional life, failed marriages, post-war numbness and trauma, alcoholism, gambling and depression. Often, semi-autobiographical novels become a site for personal apologies and self-justification but Bukowski (and Chinaski) rejects such mollycoddling of the self and bares himself to the readers like an exposed nerve.

Hank is a rather poorly disguised version of the author Charles Bukowski himself. This 1975 novel, which saw two onscreen adaptations, features the geographical and psychological journey of the protagonist Henry ‘Hank’ Chinaski. The other embarks on alcohol-fueled nocturnal misadventures with countless women in dingy pubs and bars.

One who moves from one small job to another with a dreadful sense of monotony.

Factotum bukowski