{"id":3383,"date":"2025-12-07T18:03:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T02:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3383"},"modified":"2025-12-07T18:03:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T02:03:39","slug":"review-ham-on-rye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3383","title":{"rendered":"Review: Ham on Rye"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A friend recommended this strongly to me, and though I&#8217;ve generally tacked away from Charles Bukowski, I dropped it on my LAPL hold list. If he always writes like this, that&#8217;s my mistake.  <em>Ham on Rye<\/em> just blew me away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bukowski writes phenomenally sharply.  I get the impression that every word on the page is there to do exactly what he wants it to do.  I am even more impressed that he marshals his words without fanfare.  There are not many quotable phrases or passages here.  But I am always in exactly the moment he is telling me about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He does this in the service of a first person narrative from a character who I probably wouldn&#8217;t want to spend too much time with.  He puts a person on the page who is unapologetically outside society in some basic ways and walks us through his early life.  The protagonist comes from an abusive home and a poor world.  The language is raw and blunt.  And perfect.  Bukowski puts the reader exactly into the evolving mind of an amoral person.  Even &#8220;amoral&#8221; is not quite right.  His protagonist has a code, it&#8217;s just not aligned with society.  It&#8217;s one of those works that the only thing that describes it perfectly is the thing itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bukowski does this as Charles Bukowski.  His persona is well defined as an alcoholic outsider.  Any reader is going to see <em>Ham on Rye<\/em> as autobiographical.  And he puts this perfect realization of a shambling mess on the page knowing people will think it&#8217;s him.  That is bravery that I respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A must.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend recommended this strongly to me, and though I&#8217;ve generally tacked away from Charles Bukowski, I dropped it on my LAPL hold list. If he always writes like this, that&#8217;s my mistake. Ham on Rye just blew me away. Bukowski writes phenomenally sharply. I get the impression that every word on the page is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}