The Bookworm: Ham on Rye

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski. 283 pages. Ecco. 1982.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned 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 not only represents my second experience with Los Angeles literary legend Charles Bukowski, but the last book I bought in California. I picked it up along with Anarchism on my last trip to the City of Angels and Skylight Books, so in a certain way I was a little sad when I finished the last page.

(Thinking about it now, Ham on Rye was the last book I bought. The most recent additions to my reading queue were relics from my closest or given to me as presents. I think it might be time to go on a shopping spree at Prairie Lights.)

It was a premeditated and symbolic purchase. My last Cali-bought book needed to embody LA and Southern California, and I knew Bukowski could deliver. I was not proven wrong.

Ham on Rye is a gritty, obscene, and shamefully hilarious novel about the youth and adolescence of Henry Chinaski in Depression-era Los Angeles. It is very closely based on Bukowski’s own upbringing, and much of the novel is, I assume, autobiographical. In Bukowski: Born into This, the documentary I saw very late one night a few years ago, it was said Ham on Rye was, if I remember correctly, Bukowski’s effort to exorcise the demons that haunted him from his childhood, especially that of the abuse he suffered from his dad. Ham on Rye is dedicated “for all the fathers,” and you could say the novel presents a method of parenting and, especially, fathering that are far from exemplary.

We follow Chinaski from his first memory in Germany (much like Bukowski, Chinaski’s American father presumably met his German mother while in Europe for World War I) through elementary school, junior high, and high school to that trying and confusing time after graduation. The book ends on December 7, 1941 after Chinaski and his friend hear a radio bulletin about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Not only is the novel a criticism of abusive and overbearing parenting, it is also a scathing commentary on the American education system, socio-economic hierarchy, and cultural inculcation of violence and hate. Chinaski and the kids growing up in depressed LA have taken after their parents: they fight, drink, smoke, and womanize from an early age. The kind of “simpler times” mantra you heard from your grandparents about growing up in the 1920s and ‘30s does not exist in Ham on Rye. The book makes it seem like the kind of halcyon era of mutual respect, hard work, and rock solid values that older generations pine for never existed — at least during the Great Depression. Behind the façade of prosperity for the rich and famous, the United States has always been a nation of satyrs, nymphomaniacs, and alcoholics devoid of morals, goodwill, and hope.

Also in Bukowski’s critical crosshairs was the tyranny of cultural norms. Chinaski is an outcast and loner (despite the contradictory kinship he feels with many of the boys he grows up with), and somewhere along the line he rejects the expectations of him in American society. All he wants to do is sleep for years or shut himself in a cave in Colorado with a Tommy Gun. He cannot bear the thought of doing the nine-to-five grind (who does, really?) and toward the end of the book he checks out Los Angeles’s infamous Skid Row “to get ready for my future.” Later Chinaski muses:

Skid row was disgusting. The life of the sane, average man was dull, worse than death. There seemed to be no possible alternative.

No matter what he does, the kid just can’t win.

As depressing and sad of a tale as it is, Ham on Rye is not horrific. In fact, it is sadistically hilarious. As critical and serious as it is, the tone is reminiscent of “we laugh about it now” memories; it almost gave me the sense that Bukowski was cathartically joking about the hardships of his childhood. There are parts that are funny as hell, and I laughed in a lot of places others would not. Though semi-autobiographical, there are certain things about the book that are just absurd, especially those regarding Chinaski’s junior high years and classmates.

Ham on Rye was a quick and great read. It felt a little amateurish and blatant, but having read the whole thing I think that motif fits perfectly. Without a doubt, Bukowski paints a vivid and real picture of life in the real Los Angeles, not the glossy, sunny version depicted in its native industry.

Oh, and the highlighted yearbook portrait on the cover is, I think, Bukowski’s real senior picture.

New words I learned: All definitions courtesy of my of my MacBook dictionary. Strop: “a device, typically a strip of leather, for sharpening straight razors.” Mata Hari: “(1876–1917), Dutch dancer and secret agent; born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She probably worked for both French and German intelligence services before being executed by the French in 1917.” Transom: its usage here meant “a strengthening crossbar, in particular one set above a window or door.”