Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski
Vocab level: C2
You're not logged in yet, your progress will not be saved!
Login now
or
Create an account
Loading...
Loading...
Charles Bukowski was a 20th century American writer and poet
known for his unfiltered, potent, and often crude takes on life.
Bukowski was born in Germany in 1920 and then emigrated with his family to America in 1923.
Bukowski had a horrible childhood, beaten regularly by his father starting at age 6.
As an immigrant from Germany, Bukowski was ridiculed by other kids for his accent and clothing,
ostracized as an outcast throughout his schooling.
Into his teenage years, Bukowski developed a condition that covered his face with extreme acne and acne related blemishes,
further intensifying his self-consciousness and isolation.
The circumstances of abuse and loneliness imposed onto Bukowski as a young child and adolescent
laid the groundwork for his perspective on life and his desire to eventually express himself as a writer.
In an interview much later in his life, Bukowski said that his father was a great literary teacher
because he taught him the meaning of pain, more specifically, "pain without reason."
"When you get the shit kicked out of you long enough..."
"You will have a tendency to say what you really mean."
In his 20s, after two years at college,
Bukowski would quit school and make his first real attempt at becoming a professional writer,
bouncing around the United States doing short-term blue-collar jobs,
while writing hundreds of short stories.
However, out of the hundreds of stories, only a couple during this time would go on to get published,
and the ones that did found essentially no success.
After a couple years, Bukowski basically stopped writing all together,
disappointed by the publishing process and his apparent inability to write well enough to be successful.
Bukowski would go on to work various blue-collar jobs for several years thereafter.
Then in 1955, at 35 years old, after about 10 years of not writing,
Bukowski nearly died from a serious bleeding ulcer.
He survived, however. And then soon after, as fate would have it,
Bukowski quit his job, which was at the post office at the time,
and began writing again.
A couple more years went by and Bukowski would publish several pieces during this time
but still, nothing was providing much success,
and he was forced to return to the post office of which he had originally quit.
Counter to the original time, though, this time, Bukowski continued writing while at the post office.
Before his shift, he would use whatever time he had to write.
Bukowski would continue in this for many years,
getting a collection of pieces published here and there in underground magazines.
All with very little success.
With no real sight of success or money or fame or even just creating a living from writing,
Bukowski continued writing nearly every day before work for years.
Of course, we know how Bukowski's story ended.
He is being spoken about right now as a writer.
A renowned, successful, and important enough one to be spoken about with significance decades after his passing,
to be considered one of the greats of all time.
Bukowski, however, didn't end up becoming traditionally or publicly successful until he was into his 50s,
many more years into the second stint of working at the post office.
Only after a long, continued attempt at writing did Bukowski's work finally become noticed and appreciated by an audience,
and only after a deal with a publisher who agreed to fund Bukowski's work, did Bukowski begin to make any sort living from it.
At 50 years old, on the tail end of the traditional career timeline,
Bukowski got his first real shot and took it.
After it would seem like to many that it was over, it began.
And he would soon become increasingly successful and famous in the literary world, and culture at large, not long after.
It took Bukowski years and years of writing and toiling and trying
to finally have circumstances workout in his favor so he could gain traction and find success as a writer.
To get what he wanted since he was teenager and fulfill what he believed his life was for.
In this, it is at least initially perplexing that his gravestone reads right now, "Don't Try."
A message that seems rather grim, especially for a gravestone, as well as counterintuitive to his story.
How could a man who became successful in fulfilling his idea of himself.
A man who, although it took a while, found immense respect and recognition for his craft,
all because of his relentless trying;
how could this man leave the words, "Don't try." as his final offering?
Arguably, perhaps this is where the most important idea can be found,
not only in Bukowski's work, but in Bukowski's life.
In a letter to William Packard, a publisher, friend, and fellow writer,
Bukowski wrote, "Too many writers write for the wrong reasons."
"They want to get famous or they want to get rich"
"or they want to get laid by the girls with the bluebells in their hair..."
"When everything works best, it's not because you chose writing, but because writing chose you."
"It's when you're mad with it."
"When it's stuffed in your ears, nostrils, under your finger nails."
"It's when there's no hope but that."
In this letter, Bukowski is referring to aspiring writers,
but he's arguably referring to something much larger.
The notion of purpose and success and creative endeavors in general.
When you were very young and someone asked you for the first time what your favorite color was
and you decided that it was blue or red or whatever else.
Perhaps it felt like a choice but it wasn't really.
No one chooses how colors make them feel and why some seem to paint onto the brain with better feelings than others.
We can describe the reasons why we like the color we like, but we can't choose why we do.
The color, sort of, chooses us.
In a relatively low stakes situation like our favorite color,
it's easy to just realize which one feels best and declare it without trying.
How one defines their purpose and carries out the bulk of their life, however, is not so easy nor so low stakes,
making it inevitably more complicated, convoluted and challenging.
Although, perhaps it is, at its core, somewhat the same as knowing your favorite color.
In the same letter to Packard, Bukowski went on to say,
"We work too hard, we try too hard. Don't try, don't work."
"It's there, looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb."
In this, Bukowski alludes to the idea that if you have to try to try.
If you have try to care about something, or have to try to want something,
perhaps you don't care about it and perhaps you don't want it.
Perhaps it isn't your favorite color.
Throughout his life, Bukowski constantly returned to writing,
never reducing or modifying his voice for the sake of something else.
Never letting the rejection or the suffering throughout the process ultimately take writing away from him.
It's not that Bukowski didn't try, it's that he didn't try to be something that he wasn't.
He tried to be a writer, but he didn't try to want to try to be a writer,
nor did he try to write how he wanted to write.
He just did it and kept on doing it.
At least creatively, we seem to often perform at our best when we are ourselves, natural and honest,
attending to who we really are and what we really want to say or do,
without the addition of ulterior motives.
Without forcing it or overthinking too much.
And perhaps this is, in part, what Bukowski meant.
Truthfully, no one other than Bukowski can say or know exactly what Bukowski ever really thought or meant in anything.
And none of this is to suggest that something as hard and complicated as purpose and passion and desire and success is easy or prescribable.
Because it isn't.
It's all as unclear and complicated as the very brain that contrives the whole system.
And it's not as if writing, or film making, or painting, or making music or business or whatever else
must come easy to a writer or film maker or painter or musician etc.
In order for it the be the right thing or for them to be great at it.
But it is likely, however, that if the pain and endurance of working through the process does not feel worth it,
and you are not compelled to do it even in the face of rejection or hardship or sacrifice,
then perhaps it is here where Bukowski might say, don't try.
But if it does. If the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of potentially suffering through the process.
If the thought of a life without it, or never having tried it at all, terrifies you.
If it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you're not trying,
perhaps Bukowski might say here; "Try!"
and "if you're going to try, go all the way."
- Next exercise: Parasite in the Poo
- Previous exercise: Attack of the Killer Fungi