Mr B's Reading Year: Part 2 - The Polish Boxer

A story is nothing but a lie. An illusion. And that illusion only works if we trust in it. 

Between extensive travelling and a summer in the Social Programme Office, my Mr B's Reading Year blog has lost its way (though I have received and read five books now with the same enthusiasm as ever), but now I'm back to normality it's time to catch up. I was instantly struck by my second book, The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon, on the strength of the cover, the blurb and Mr B's personal recommendation. I remembered reading about Halfon's visit to the bookshop several months ago and being intrigued by this Guatemalan literature professor, especially as my knowledge of literature from his country only extended as far as Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias.

Halfon's stories are as addictive as the smoke that permeates through all of them. I rushed through the whole book in one afternoon desperate to know where the semi-fictional Eduardo's search for answers would take him next in this series of interconnected stories. The Polish Boxer has everything I look for in a book: an engaging, flawed  but likeable first person narrator, an eclectic mix of characters (including a girlfriend who draws graphs of her orgasms and a Serbian half-gypsy classical pianist), and observations of the beauty, sadness and absurdity of every day life.

As an aspiring literature teacher myself, I was particularly struck by Halfon's very honest reflections on the futility and vacuousness of academic conferences at times, the point of teaching literature to a class full of students who don't care, the moral implications of simply studying literature when there are people really suffering in the places we study, and his having to put this out of his mind to get on with his job and still appreciate the power of stories. The Polish Boxer is therefore quite a melancholy read, but the fleeting moments of unexpected human contact that proliferate through the stories are fascinating and oddly beautiful.

Learn more about Mr B's Reading Year and how to get one for yourself here.

Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye

Having finished all the reading for my dissertation, I finally have a chance to get on with all the reading I've been meaning to do for months, starting with Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye (1982) which, as I said back in March, I have been meaning to read for a very long time.

Ham on Rye is the semi-autobiographical tale of Bukowski's alter-ego Hank Chinaski, charting his first memories until his early twenties. While not as shocking as some of Bukowski's earlier work (although increasingly graphic as Hank grows up), Ham on Rye instantly grips you with short, blunt sentences and a refusal to censure real life. It is a novel full of pain and weariness, yet studded with Bukowski's trademark dry wit. Growing up in the height of the Depression, Chinaski is repeatedly urged by his parents to make a better life for himself, but he cannot get passed the futility of it all. He is plagued by terrible acne and lacking the money, sporting ability or social skills to make friends with anyone but other outsiders, who he would prefer to avoid. As he grows up, Hank finds solace in only two things: alcohol and literature.

I wanted to share a couple of Chinaski's thoughts which stood out for me. The first perfectly encapsulates the power of reading:

"Words weren't dull, words were anything that can 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" (165).

The second is a fascinating insight into Bukowski's own conception of literature. With his usual cynicism, he notes that literature has no real power to change anything, but has its own value. 

D.H. Lawrence, G.B. Shaw, Huxley... "It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless" (184).

If Hank Chinaski were to read Bukowski, I'm sure he would add him to this list. In the end, Ham on Rye is just the account of a melancholy, uninspired existence, but Bukowski's stark, forceful style makes it a fascinating read.