Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski is a raw and honest semi-autobiographical novel that delves into the unruly and depressing youth and young adulthood of Henry Chinaski. The story follows Chinaski's struggles with an abusive father, sexual frustration, schoolyard beatings, and the discovery of alcohol, all set against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Bukowski's writing style is described as dark, humorous, and brutally funny, capturing the difficulties of growing up for young outsiders in a transgressive and at times disgusting narrative.
The novel explores themes of alienation, disillusionment, survival, and the impact of a traumatic childhood on shaping one's adulthood. Through vivid recollections, frank statements, and a fast-paced narrative, Bukowski paints a poignant picture of Chinaski's journey from birth to late adolescence, showcasing his resilience in the face of adversity and his struggle to find his place in a hypocritical and false society.
Genres:
Tropes/Plot Devices:
Topics:
Notes:
Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include depictions of child abuse, intense bullying, mental health struggles, and alcohol abuse.
From The Publisher:
"Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther." -Los Angeles Times Book Review
In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, woman, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D.H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.
Ratings (26)
Incredible (4) | |
Loved It (16) | |
Liked It (6) |
Reader Stats (33):
Read It (26) | |
Want To Read (5) | |
Not Interested (2) |
2 comment(s)
“I sat back down and poured a glass of wine. I left my door open. The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios…we were all in it together. We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape. We we’re all going to be flushed away.”
Extremely quick and entertaining enough read. His life growing up just sucked which explains the various struggles he had to endure but clearly things worked out for him later in life!
I loved this novel. Charles Bukowski is one of my favorite authors. His direct, no-filter style of writing influenced me when I was searching for my own voice. The main thing I learned from reading his novels was I could use my own life to inspire my own fiction.
What can you read after
Ham on Rye?
About the Author:
Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.
Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.
When you click the Amazon link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commision, at no cost to you.
