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Rating: In addition to his very famous and highly contested story collections (Notes of a Dirty Old Man, Women, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town), the good Bukowski dabbled in real novels as well, an occasion in which he did have to bow to the syntactical and grammatical rules so often flouted in his short stories, but did not at all change the purity and typicality of his content.
Yet, in "Ham on Rye", the islander of the Beat Generation, not properly called, incredibly goes on to "break" the booze-sex combo - the undisputed trademark of his production - transforming this last element into something not achieved, even rejected by the protagonist. To the colorful and multi-colored facets, benevolent and malevolent, unhappy and serene, apocalyptic or ascetic scattered in the mini-stories of the non-novels (in which everyone - including Bukowski himself - mixed everything and more), the author opposes a single point of view, a single and inseparable idea, one big thought that from the first pages will unfold until the epilogue. That is, that of the spoiled boy, the failed man, the washout who does not even desire to comfortably approach the secret caves of the fair sex, like all those unknown characters that the dirty old man made copulate wildly and ecstatically in his more famous collections.
The perpetual conflict, although essential, unavoidable and inevitable, between storm and clarity in the minor works completely escapes this production, banishing the blue of happy days and bringing to the throne the grayness of an alter-Bukowski adolescent, almost the perfect prologue to his adult condition, unable to find the slightest ray of sunshine in his miserable existence. Henry Chinaski, son of German immigrants in Los Angeles, appears to be the Kafka of the Great Depression, the defenseless and solitary little man harassed by a father-boss pretending to have a job, the boy destined for the dives, the suburbs, the wandering. A mediocre student, apathetic and asocial, Chinaski begins to transform into a "tough" street boy through football, brawls, recklessness, nihilism and empathy; alongside him, a gang of companions worthy of his work, however not so "dirty" and "mean." The transition from an already not-so-bright childhood to a pre-vagabond youth in the abyss of nothingness is marked by the metamorphosis of the language from innocent, nostalgic and childlike in the first chapters into an ever rougher, filthier, more imperfect and intemperate vernacular: from the diary of a child visiting his aunt or participating in an orange theft during a banal picnic to the dark accounts of days spent giving meaninglessness to his life, getting into fights with bullies and non-friends (with whom he still makes merry), discovering the power of alcohol, probably the only semblance of positivity in Chinaski/alter Bukowski's chronicle. Yet, in all this recipe of unconformity, poison and institutionalized negativity, the fundamental ingredient of the bukowskian cake is missing: sexual approach. Good at fighting, excellent at drinking, and skilled in the field, Chinaski surprisingly refuses the author's second magnum opus, a refusal that can be explained by the pathological lack of trust in others (and thus also in women). Unlike his colleagues in the Notes & co., nihilists, empathetics, and solitaries like him, yet lovers of the most ferocious carnality, Chinaski exhibits a 360-degree nihilism in interpersonal relationships, denying others in favor of a "deviated" and unhealthy egocentrism.
Drinker, chaste by choice, but also a writer. The Chinaski of the Ham on Rye is nonetheless little more than a scribbler at a stall, a writer of introspective and personal stories not even comparable to the authentic Bukowski self-inserted in some of his tales, the poet and sporadically also journalist (see the notorious "Open Pussy") worshipped by the upper bourgeoisie and pampered by publishers, professors and rectors despite the insolence and the marriage with good wine. The boy, therefore, does not even manage to pave his way with writing and reading (another passion soon faded), and in fact ends up wandering for a few paltry sheets: the father-dictator does not approve of his work and condemns him to nihilism and wandering, a prequel to a further and far more bitter and desolate epilogue of the work (the attack on Pearl Harbor, the enlistment of "friends" in the navy, the prognosis of an even more gloomy and vile future).
"Ham on Rye" is not an easy work to read, the classic story that many reductionists consider it to be of the drunken-womanizer-hippie triptych, the tale that between one crudeness and another still manages to draw some mischievous smile. Instead, it is the demonstration that indifference, anarchy, nihilism, unconformity are not sides of the same coin, that of pure human expression exacerbated of all private vices of their negative and compromising component, but on the contrary can result - like all other moral, philosophical and ethical (or unethical) choices available to be chosen by the individual - in a condition of unhappiness, uselessness and despair. In short, even the most libertarian and thorny choice possible, preferably aware, may not yield the hoped-for results, either negative or positive. Chinaski is then the disappointed par excellence, the one who even in the most total negativity has not found the missing piece of his existential puzzle.
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