Book Review: "Ham on Rye" by Charles Bukowski

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”

- Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

I will have to admit to everyone that I don't find Charles Bukowski's poetry interesting in the slightest. I have always thought of him as a Kerouac-wannabe and a d-list beatnik for his high-brow commercial middle-class faux-cynicism. From evading the draft to his bad metaphors, I thought I would at least give his semi-autobiographical novel Ham on Rye a go to read. Though I do feel sorry for the guy for the abuse he received from his father, this book doesn't change much of my initial opinion about him apart from the fact that his novels seem slightly more tolerable than his poems.

I remember a lecturer of mine saying once some years back, 'if you want to destroy a woman's faith in men, get her to read Bukowski...' And honestly, if you want to destroy a man's faith in humanity, get him to read Ham on Rye. Cynical, debauched and more than often, the dumb fantasy of the American down-and-outs, this is less Steinbeck than this bad-luck-chuck wants to make it out to be.

In the beginnings of the book Henry describes his home life as chaotic, his father gets into arguments with everyone and people think of the father as quite a bit of an idiot. Often they simply stand around waiting for him to finish his little rant before they ask him to leave wherever he is. The father is abusive and mean, a surly guy with a bad attitude who beats his child and scolds his wife. The child is our protagonist in question who, when at school, doesn't have very many friends and doesn't think he wants any.

The misanthrope is a common character in books of this time but whilst the character is growing up, he doesn't really change much and his attitude just becomes worse. As an adult, he is basically just a bigger but more pathetic version of himself as a child and has some of the traits of his father. What I think makes me somewhat dislike this book is this low amount of character development. Starting out as the societal misanthrope with no real friends and a dodgy version of what morality looks like makes no sense. What should happen is we should see the character lose their sense of morality and become a misanthrope later in the text. I understand why it happens the other way around in the book but it doesn't make for interesting reading and can sound repetitive.

One of the key scenes in the book for me, regardless of how I find the author, is when his parents receive the letter from school that he has beaten another boy and his father therefore decides to beat him in return for disgracing the family. It seems like a turning point in the Henry's life though there is little development from this point, it seems to slow the whole book down to an almost stopping point. The change of pace is a refreshing look at how undeserved pain is experienced for the first real (and more physical and emotional) times by our character, though it is administered enough at school (and often by the principal).

All in all, this book is one of those malcontents-from-the-beginning-for-reasons-you-won't-find-out-until-much-later books, but by the time you've found out you are too exhausted to care. It really just goes on and on in an angry way which is probably more suited to male loneliness now than it was back in the day it was written. Now, male loneliness is a very real problem, but something as much of a Debbie Downer as this book is not the solution. I find this book probably making things much worse down the line. I liked it more than the poetry, but it still is not really anything great.