#Ham on Rye

[quotespile]

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.

Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

[litsnaps]

[random-poetry-account]

[quotessentially]

From Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye

[belamercado]

I had no interests. I had no interests in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn't let me.

- Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

[audiemurphy1945]

Once we were in a drug store and my mother and I were standing to one side while my father yelled at a clerk. Another clerk asked my mother, “Who is that horrible man? Every time he comes in here there’s an argument.” “That’s my husband,” my mother told the clerk. Yet, I remember another time. He was working as a milkman and made early morning deliveries. One morning he awakened me. “Come on, I want to show you something.” I walked outside with him. I was wearing my pajamas and slippers. It was still dark, the moon was still up. We walked to the milk wagon which was horsedrawn. The horse stood very still. “Watch,” said my father. He took a sugar cube, put it in his hand and held it out to the horse. The horse ate it out of his palm. “Now you try it…” He put a sugar cube in my hand. It was a very large horse. “Get closer! Hold out your hand!” I was afraid the horse would bite my hand off. The head came down; I saw the nostrils; the lips pulled back, I saw the tongue and the teeth, and then the sugar cube was gone. “Here. Try it again…” I tried it again. The horse took the sugar cube and waggled his head. “Now,” said my father, “I’ll take you back inside before the horse shits on you.”

- Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982

[quotes--and--lyrics]

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.”

Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

[daintytrollop]

[bookish-peach]

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski: A Selection of Quotes

" A truth first encountered can be very funny"

"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"

"I watched people from afar, it was like a stage play. Only they were on stage and I was an audience of one"

"People started but I didn't care. There was more fear than horror in their eyes now. I hoped I could stay that way forever"

"When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great"

"Gathered around me were the weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life"

"I watched them come out of the water, glistening, smooth-skinned and young, undefeated. I wanted them to want me. But never out of pity. Yet, despite their smooth untouched bodies and minds they still were missing something because they were as yet basically untested. When adversity finally arrived in their lives it might come too late or too hard"

"I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me"

"When I was a kid [...] I had run out into the street looking for my buddies, yelling[...] and nobody answered me, nobody said anything, they had just walked away with their heads down"

"The I nodded at the kid. I moved blue trunks in, both arms flailing. I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is".

[quesontmesamisdevenus]

What a weary time those years were - to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

Charles Bukowski, Ham on rye (1982)

[ambigg]

[pacifymebby]

I finished Ham on Rye and as much as it's reaffirmed that I just don't vibe with Bukowski very much, I think I actually understand better why men of a certain disposition are drawn to him or at least like it.

Like Sam for instance, sings about his nihilism and not seeing any point in anything, and despising a lot of the world and seeing injustice everywhere and like, I know from talking to my dad and B that when you grow up as a young lad living in poverty you are surrounded by and consumed by a kind of malevolent hopelessness. And Ham on Rye does have that same feeling really threaded through it.

There's a bit in it where he says "We were all in it together. We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape. We were all going to be flushed away." Like, I can see how someone who writes the songs Sam Fender writes might be able to identify with a lot of the sentiments in it.

Ironically I really enjoyed the last chapter which I will talk about under the cut just in case spoilers

He walks into this penny arcade, his only kind of long term friend he respects has just been called off to the marines after pearl harbour, so he's alone and he walks into this penny arcade. He's no one to play his favourite boxing game with, so he plays it with a little mexican boy who's like 8. It's the only time in the book you see him do a genuinely gentle, someone "human" thing, just him and this wee boy playing the boxing game. The little boy picked a broken character and one of the arms on his boxer doesn't work, so the odds are against him, but he's undeterred and just keeps going at it with childish optimism and eventually he wins and when he wants to play again Hank plays him again using his last bits of change, with this notion that actually winning the boxing game is really important. And he doesn't get mad when he loses he just walks away with really nothing left and nothing to do. Basically my favourite character is this wee nameless mexican boy right at the end and the whole scene is really touching and im probably doing a "the curtains are blue" and over analysing but I really feel like actually that scene is so deeply meaningful. It's the only credit I'll ever give Bukowski (I will never read another of his books ever)

[sibylvanereviews]

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

1/5

yeah... I don't know what I was expecting.

Spoilers Ahead

Honestly, not much of the story is compelling. There are instances where I felt the poetry in his words, but overall it was shadowed by the over the top misogyny. I understand there's a very necessary crudity to be had here, but jesus, constantly referring to any woman by the word "cunt" ? As a descriptor, not an insult. It was just not an enjoyable or insightful read. Sure it's authentic, but I live that authentic. The message just doesn't resonate from this side.

Not sure if I am going to continue and read the rest of the trilogy.

[blogmollylane]

Currently reading for book club: Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

[hankfinchh]

[audiemurphy1945]

He even got up once in English class and read an essay called “The Value of Friendship,” and while he was reading it he kept glancing at me. It was a stupid essay, soft and standard, but the class applauded when he finished, and I thought, well, that’s what people think and what can you do about it? I wrote a counter-essay called, “The Value of No Friendship At All.” The teacher didn’t let me read it to the class. She gave me a “D.”

- Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982