Against the American Dream: Essays on Charles Bukowski [Russell Harrison]

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Against the American Dream: Essays on Charles Bukowski

Russell Harrison

Black Sparrow Press, CA. 1994. First paperback edition. A bit of black discoloration on the cover (seems like a printing mistake), otherwise like new. Phenomenal stuff.

From the publisher:

"although Harrison's writings on Bukowski's poetry and fiction are scholarly, they are hardly unpartisan, adopting an almost strident tone in arguments that the late poet's work remains unjustly unappreciated. By his death this past year, Bukowski had written for 50 years and published five novels (most recently Pulp), five short story collections and 10 poetry collections. But, Harrison argues consistently if not always convincingly, Bukowski has been ignored by academics and anthologists in part because he doesn't fit neatly into a genre and in part because his subject is the working class. Harrison presents Bukowski as a ``social lyricist'' and ``a proletarian poet'' who saw life in America as deadening, routinized, and whose achievement was to make poetry out of his refusal to buy into the American Dream. Harrison is at his most helpful when tracing the literary and popular influences in Bukowski's work, from the Surrealists and Bertold Brecht to Henry Miller and Jackie Gleason. Harrison quotes extensively from Bukowski's writings and analyzes their message in hopes of gaining a sympathetic and wider audience for a poet who defies convention. "

Bukowski rips and we all need to shut up and be a bit more about living and less about being online. This book make some great arguments, looks cool, and will get you back into wanting to go a little harder in life.