What're your thoughts on Bukowski? What makes him so popular?

Like it or not the board has turned upside down since the last time i posted and the thread quality is total shit now

i have no thoughts on him. thankfully i have evaded his presence beyond his image.

I don't disagree. But it has been like this for at least a year now. To be fair, I've only been here since 2012 and the quality was never good, just different shitty trends.

That doesn't even make any sense. Normies don't like Bukowski. You people are just being annoying contrarians again.

It's easy as fuck to read and doesn't convey any messages besides "life sucks lol". So it's pretty reddit tier.

why would plebbit like a drunk who goes around sleeping with a bunch of hookers? he was real scummy. thats the exact opposite of the funko collecting childrens books buyers that post over there.

I found ham on rye pretty relatable despite being a zoomer.

Where should i go from here

Bukowski is basically a brand that every mediocre wannabe intellectual/artist picks to flaunt as part of his personal style/identity. Its pretty cringey. Equally cringy are supposedly "deeper" individuals who list 4-5 great writers as their personal favorites (like Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nabokov, Dante etc.). It shows the same consumption of art as a peraonal brand. A lot of Yea Forums falls into this category. Another category of cringe that a sizeable Yea Forums portion also falls into is listing 4-5 totally obscure artists but without rhyme or reason. These people again only consume art as a personal brand/identity in this case to display how obscure and different they are. When you have an actual lover of art, he will select a list that has a common thread whether he knows it or not. You will be able to pick out these stylist notions those authors (some great and some less known) have in common and speak to the individual's psyche. These lists of favorites can change over time as the person changes and grows in experience but you can always detect some logic in their lists that speaks of sincere enjoyment of a particular theme or technique or content. 90% of this board consumes art as an identity statement. Bukowski is only the most obvious case among casuals.

Why cant i just like the writing

He's "the writer" as an identity, rather than the "the act of writing for a singular purpose" which is what you have to do in high school - ie write a book report or an essay for a grade. But Bukowski proposes - to the young mind - that writing is something you could want to do by default, that regardless of what happens to you, you remain "the writer." This is attractive when you're young: for most of your life up until that point you've been defined as being "a child" who engages in activities.

I would also say that his image as being self-destructive ties into this - even the Bluebird poem, probably his best-liked. Regardless of how he attempts to destroy himself, he comes back to writing. Similarly, the young person who reads Bukowski can begin to feel that all things that have happened to him in his life were his repression of his desire to be a writer.

he wasn't scummy enough, he's a redditor manchilds idea of edgy, just like rick and morty. He's like Celine if he was too much of a coward to write antisemitic propaganda or collaborate with the nazis

This.
People just don't like Bukowski because they are contrarians and resent anyone who isn't a faux bourgeois moralist. You even insist that Dinosauria, We is bad.

Post your 5
Mine would be
Mishima
Houellebecq
Kerouac
Jean Genet
DH Lawrence
(In that order)

this
anyone who thinks Yea Forums was ever good is a brainlet that thought the previous trend was good and couldn't see it was just different shit

>collaborate with Nazis
>in 1960s Los Angeles
Wut faggot? Not scummy enough? He wrote a poem about firemen running a train on his gf. I doubt you've experienced half the degeneracy in one of Bukowski's books. Anyone born on this side of the 20th century hasnt.

Even cringier is a person like (You) whose personal brand is telling other people that their enjoyment of a writer's work is illegitimate. Do you have some special authority to determine the purity of another person's connection to a book? Are you a psychic? You must have a very special mind if you can come up with a reason anonymous posters would work so hard to impress other anonymous posters with their "personal brand." Thank you for showing us the way. We are so envious of your pure connection to art and in awe of your rare ability to actually appreciate writing. The next time I read a poem by Bukowski and feel his words warm me, make me smile, or cry, I will remember to extinguish that feeling because it is a false one, and I will be that much closer to meeting the standards you have set out. One last question: were you a crackbaby or did the head trauma caused by your mom tossing you into a dumpster make you this stupid?

You're misreading what I wrote. You can unironically enjoy Bukowski, the reason why he gets a bad rep is because he is the most obvious example of a writer people use to form their own identity/brand. I didn't say YOU or everyone is doing that.

I think what He does very well is to speak openly about certain aspects of reality and human life. I think he does not limit himself a bit when it comes to being vulgar, but without making his literature look untalented ... Let's say, it's not the same to be direct writing well, than simply to be direct.

Highest IQ take on Buk I’ve ever seen

He is the ICP of literature

Attached: BC_2.jpg (3013x2722, 934K)

He's comfy and his books make me laugh. Good light reading for when you're sad

Read the other Chinaski stuff, then read Céline. He's much better than Bukowski

That's mostly accurate but you're missing the fact that people can have diversity of taste and enjoy things in many different styles. I have preferences, sure, but I also like to explore outside of those preferences and that occasionally ends up leading me to something surprisingly great that I enjoy all the more for its novelty.

The fact that people have their tastes so influenced by this place is sad though, after taking a break (and getting into the habit of setting aside time for reading exclusively, rather than just wasting time reading about reading), it does seem crazy to me how much people focus on a few meme books/authors. I still think Yea Forums is unique and valuable though, and very often hilarious.