Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4293 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Synopsis
With his fourth novel, legendary barfly Charles Bukowski follows the path of his alter ego Henry Chinaski through the high school years of acne and rejection, drinking his way through the Depression, and ends at the start of World War 2.

From the Publisher
Ham on Rye recounts both the comical and tragic events of Bukowski's youth (through the character Henry Chinaski), and provides a nostalgic view of a more innocent time and of an inner-city Los Angeles that has long since vanished.

Customer Reviews

MY FAV BUK BOOK!
Of all bukowski's books this is my favourite. Bukowski has some real jaw dropping, heart-warming thoughts throughout this book and I simply love it! AND it's hilarious!

If you like Bukowski check out the people who Bukowski loved: John Fante (Ask the Dust) Knut Hamsun (Hunger) Top class books!

Brilliant
Bukowski does it again - with another book that is so easy to read yet about nothing in terms of conventional 'plot' and so funny and also so sad. I just wish I hadn't read all of his stuff so I could come across it for the first time again.

A Classic
Bukowski's novel "Ham on Rye" is a coming-of age novel in that it tells the story of Bukowski's protagonist, Henry Chinaski, from his birth to his young manhood, ending with the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Chinaski is based loosely on Bukowski's own life; but "Ham on Rye" and Bukowski's other novels are, after all, works of fiction and should be read as such.

The scene of "Ham on Rye" is Los Angeles during the Great Depression, particularly the lower middle-class homes in which Chinaski grows up, as families struggle to survive and to escape from poverty. Bukowski is at his best in describing dingy homes, streets, schools, and desperate people.

But "Ham on Rye" is a coming-of-age book told with irony and twists. It seemingly mocks the story of self-discovery and self-awakening common to these distinctively American books, but in the end I think it follows the pattern of a coming-of-age story in spite of itself. Most American coming-of-age books recount the life of a young person and end when that person comes to some crisis which he meets and, thus, attains a degree of understanding of himself which he carries through life. Bukowski's book tells the story of an unhappy childhood, as Chinaski is subjected to an overbearing father and frequent beatings. In addition, as an early adolescent, Chinaski develops a terrible case of acne which exacerbates his tendency to aloneness as well as his anger and rebeliousness. After graduating from high school, Chinaski loses a menial job, enrolls in a Junior College, and begins to drink heavily. He is well on the way to a life of alcoholism, fighting, wandering, and gambling that is detailed in chronologically later novels of Chinaski's life, such as "Factotum" or "Women".

"I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the other play and they looked foolish to me."

Yet for all its rawness and Chinaski's sense of failure and purposelessness, the book conveys a sense of promise. The book shows a young Chinaski forming the desire to be a writer, and beginning to work at his craft and respond to his experiences in a manner that, years later, would result in "Ham on Rye" and in Bukowski's other works of fiction and poetry. Some of the best moments in "Ham on Rye" show the adolescent Chinaski sitting alone in the Los Angeles Public Library and ultimately discovering authors, including D.H. Lawrence, John Fante, and Sinclair Lewis, who speak to him. As had many before him, Chinaski learns that projecting oneself into artistic creation offers a form of release from the difficulties of everyday life. Chinaski writes: "Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you."


Similarly while suffering from his acute acne, Chinaski develops a character a WW I pilot named Baron Von Himmlen, and writes stories of his imagined adventures. Chinaski writes: "it made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be". (p. 168)

"Ham and Rye" is the story of how a young man found himself in adulthood leading a life of alcoholism, poverty, and loneliness, with no ambition and seemingly few prospects. The book is full of adolescent sexual frustration, dysfunctional families, rawness, vulgarity, and failure. It also includes some funny scenes. The story is told in a sharp, crude, no-nonsense style. But together with all the outward failure and the shocking scenes, we see a young Chinaski in the process of attaining his dream and gaining victory over himself after all. In spite of the dead-end vicissitudes of his life, Henry Chinaski perseveres and gradually brings his experiences alive and learns to make something worthwhile of his existence. He learns to reflect upon himself and his life and to describe them without cant or mercy. Henry Chinaski becomes a writer.

"Practice, that's all it took. All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was always controlling who got a chance and who didn't."