"Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.” - Women by Charles Bukowski.
I have just completed Women by Charles Bukowski and I would not recommend you to read it if you are looking for an intriguing story. Of course, there’s sex- too much of it actually, and being someone who read mostly classics like ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Jude the Obscure’, there were times I thought of just abandoning it. But I could not.
There is something about the book that held me. Maybe it was the language, maybe it was the hilarious tone of the narrative, or maybe I was just curious to see how many women the protagonist sleeps with till the end of the book. Honestly, I could not keep count.
The story (MILD SPOILERS)
There isn’t much in the story. Women by Charles Bukowski is just an everlasting inflow of women in the life of alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski, who is in his 50s and is enjoying popularity finally. The book is heavily influenced by his own life. He gets invited to read his poems in different places and universities. He is paid for the readings and travelling. He drinks throughout his readings, shouts and sneers at the audience and throws up now and then. He gets 300 hangovers a year and every morning he wakes up to puke.
People, particularly young men and women like his books. He gets letters from them but chooses to reply mostly the women, particularly those who show sexual interests in him. He spends some days with one woman, leaves her and then spends some more with another.
At one point, one of the women asks him why he needs so many women in life. He says that he was a clerk in his youth and ugly and not many women would like to sleep with him and now that there are so many women, he is trying to catch up and compensate the lack of women in his yesteryears.
Another time, he explains, he keeps changing women because he is researching for his book. He thinks he has a sexual interest of a teen and if he were a woman, he would have been a prostitute.
Many a time in the novel, he waits at the airport, waiting for different women to arrive. While waiting for them, he stares at the other women and imagines them with him on the bed. There are times when he introspects and asks himself what is he gaining from all these, from hurting all the people, using them. You would think he is going to make a change, but no. He falls back into the same routine of meeting new women, spending days with them, and abandoning them.
One of the women loved him too much. He took care of him well. Took him to fancy restaurants and vacations, but he left her for another woman. After he leaves her, she gets into depression, gets involved in an abusive relationship and finally dies.
That is pretty much the entire story. There’s really not much of a climax.
Final verdict
If you like to read plot-heavy stories, Women by Charles Bukowski is going to be a very dull read. It’s alcohol, new women, sex, and repeat. It’s womanizing and misogynist. If you get easily offended, don’t read it. However, if you are into erotica, you are going to find it amusing. Also, the narrative is hilarious, as I previously mentioned, and the story is fast flowing. You won’t get tired of the narrative and laughter is guaranteed.
Some of the quotes from Women by Charles Bukowski
1. “That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
2. “Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped. Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.”
3. “Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
4. “People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”
5. “And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”
6. “I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.”
7. “Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”
8. “I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.”
9. “Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.”
10. “Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two.”
11. “Women: I liked the colours of their clothing; the way they walked; the cruelty in some faces; now and then the almost pure beauty in another face, totally and enchantingly female. They had it over us: they planned much better and were better organized. While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding - whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end, it hardly mattered; no matter what they did, we ended up lonely and insane.”