Charles
Bukowski, the “Poet Laureate of Skid Row” had humble beginnings. He was
born Charles Brown, aka Charlie. His parents were somewhat cold and
distant. They talked in odd muted trumpet-like voices that were
unintelligible to almost everyone. As a young adult, in an effort to put
his conflictual relationship with his parents behind him, he changed his last
name to Bukowski.
The
trajectory of Charlie Bukowski's life from being a melancholy pessimistic boy
to alcoholic, whore-loving misanthrope can be said to start with his friendship
with Bobby “Pigpen” Jones. Charlie first met Pigpen while lying flat on
his back after a football “mishap”. Pigpen was a dirty, ostracized young
boy. And while many may have seen Charlie’s other childhood friend, Linus
Fitzgerald, as a great influence in his early life, it would be Pigpen that
Charlie referred to in an interview when he stated: “He helped me get off my
back that day with a dusty hand. And the grit of that dust was etched
forever into my flesh.” Pigpen would come to represent an almost
zen-like careless disregard to anything wholesome and clean which Charlie came
to emulate.
Clearly,
though, one of the main themes in Charlie Bukowski’s life was his conflictual
relationship with women. He was married several times. But once his
writing career began to gain some traction, he took to one night stands and
love affairs. Charlie detailed many of these trysts in his book “Women:
Always Leaving Me Flat on My Back”. More than one biographer has drawn a
rather clear line through all the females that Charlie took up with. That
line begins with the Little Red-Haired Girl, an elusive femme fatale that
plagued Charlie’s listless and insulated childhood. He drew up a
near-obsessive focus on this young woman who “never once noticed even the
single greasy strand of hair on my prematurely balding head.” This line
ends with Pamela O’Brien (aka “Cupcakes” due to her buxom nature) a red-headed
single mother. Charlie tried to recreate this fantasy woman in every
relationship right up to Cupcakes. When Cupcakes painfully left him for
Linus Fitzgerald, Charlie “swore off of f***** red heads for the rest of
my life.”
Noted
literature critic, Micheal McCall, after culling through all sixty of Charlie’s
published books, also notes the reoccurring theme of footballs (and especially
their connection to devious women) in Charlie’s writing. Footballs show
up through-out the poetry collections: “Dangling in Mid-Air Before Falling”,
“Slouching Toward the End Zone” and “Pigskin Ballet”. Maybe more so than
the Little Red Haired Girl did a girl named Lucy (thought to be a pseudonym)
seem to affect Charlie’s life. The image of this girl, in particular,
snatching away the infamous footballs (perhaps a metaphor for sobriety)
reoccurs numerous times throughout his work. Lucy also showed up as a
figure in the dream-like short-story “The Devil is Lucy” in which she tries to
counsel a morose young boy in a pretend game of psychologist. Her final
refrain: “You are a loser, Charlie Brown” could easily have been a summation of
this man’s life. This theme, however, becomes most obvious in the epitaph
on his tombstone. Below the phrase “Don’t Try” is the inscription, “Here
I lie flat on my back, staring skyward, just as I did so many times when the
football was taken away. I think I’ll just stay put now.”
1
snap
I love Charlie Brown and all of the characters in Peanuts. I thought Snoopy and their friendship would be a guiding force for the pessimistic and morose Charlie Brown. I also would imagine Peppermint Patty and Marcy being good friends to good ol' Chuck. I'm not surprise that Linus did not end up being in Charlie Brown's life for long.