Charles Bukowski
Hollywood, Hollywood!

With this unusual novel, the "great dirty old man" almost definitively closes the legendary saga of the alter Henry Chinaski, and he does so in style, drawing a strange curtain that to Bukowski enthusiasts of the last hour might seem like some sort of literary ploy and to the apprentice barflies a genuine farewell shock. The Chinaski/Bukowski epic, spread out into an intricate labyrinth of novels and stories in which the triangle yes/no women-glasses-road represented the main leitmotif as well as the unique emblem, thus ends with a kind of interruption disguised as continuity of this vital-argumentative flow, a break with the past but without shattering it into tiny pieces, a face-off with the lifestyle of the drunken-poet, although not complete and completed.

Hollywood, Hollywood, the penultimate work before the fabulous "requiem" of Pulp (a true recapitulatory testament of his productions, characters, and the narrated background) is nothing other than a novelized version of the production, organizational, and managerial ordeal for the feature film "Barfly" on which Bukowski himself worked on the screenplay. Here, Chinaski, already settled down, married (!) to Sarah, holder of a sufficiently comfortable and affluent existence, far away (but not forgetful) from the "poetic" squalor of the Los Angeles slums, is contacted by director Jon Pinchot (alias Barbet Schroeder, creator of the real Barfly) to write the screenplay of what would become a somewhat exaggerated and mythologized autobiography of the cursed poet. Although hesitant and uncertain, Chinaski prepares the script for The Dance of Jean Beam. However, a good amount of time will pass before the Chinaskian creation reaches the big screen: among the tensions of Pinchot (who nevertheless appreciates and believes in the project), the chronic difficulties in luring accommodating and interested producers and financiers, the lack of funds to start filming, and the hard work selecting the actors, The Dance of Jean Beam lingers in receiving a worthy baptism. Once the obstacles are overcome, the film becomes a reality, and despite varying critical reception, it enjoys excellent box-office success.

As mentioned before, Hollywood, Hollywood interrupts the rocky path of Bukowskian work and does so in the strangest and most curious manner possible. Thus ends the disheveled and dark times of Chinaski, forced to switch from one job to another within a few hours, immersed in alcohol and the pure carnality of the natural; the desecrator of the American dream seems to have lazily curled up in the semi-bourgeois alcove of the wealthy literati, a real slap in the face to those who believed in the eternal drunk with the magic pen, the king of cynicism and the emperor of skepticism: no more the classic harem of easy, uninhibited women, nor the nightmare of recurring femmes fatales, farewell to the bench-bivouacs, to the sullied parks and the no-exit jobs, farewell to the old, broken-down, patched-up cars. And yet Henry, well-off as needed, finally monogamous, even a buyer of a flashy BMW, tries to escape the gaudy and consumerist comforts of the much-hated bourgeois climate: who better than he can transpose to film the misadventures of the most famous barfly of L.A. and the United States?

And so, Chinaski, immersed but not sentimentally involved in the making of The Dance of Jean Beam, transforms into an exegete of himself, albeit accepting the uncomfortable compromise with entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, the major bosses, the starlets of the crazy eighties Hollywood and the tastes of the uncritical, reductionist, simplistic, presumptuous and cunning masses. He does so, yet without really believing in it, almost silently drafting the screenplay of a future film blockbuster, interposing this task with the continuation of his own salvific poetic flair, as well as the minimum of alcoholic "revelries" still allowed himself. Once the film is edited, distributed, and premiered in theaters filled with critics, famous actors and members of the common people, Henry temporarily experiences the last of his transformations, a true nemesis-mockery, or rather the descent into the role of the enriched bourgeois. Memorable is his arrival at the premiere of The Dance of Jean Beam in a limousine complete with champagne and other comforts included, as requested by him. Henry Chinaski, the poet who stayed in the foul taverns of the slums farthest from the glitter of Hollywood, has been able to surpass himself, subjugating his own inclinations towards rudeness and shabbiness to the ostentatious taste of chic entrepreneurship just to mock it, to feast in a funny and entertaining way at the expense of those pseudo-alternative and pseudo-nonconventional bourgeois who enriched him.

How to admirably bid farewell to the great Chinaski if not by seeing him sprawling in a "limo" drinking champagne awaiting flashes, red carpet, and front-row seats? A rather bizarre ending, disorienting, perhaps disappointing and bitter for the usual regulars, yet bringing crescent smiles to the faces of true aficionados of the ineffable and never predictable old dirty man.