don't try

Last night I saw Factotum, a movie based on the novel by the late Charles Bukowski.

A factotum is a man who performs many jobs. Factotum concerns Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski, and his alcoholic existence, as he gets fired from every job, places bets at the race track during working hours, stumbles into dysfunctional relationships with seedy-but-sweet women, and writes up a storm.

I get compared to Bukowski, not because of my writing but because there are some similarities: We're both passionate about writing, we're both men of leisure, and we're both at odds with the cultural snobs out there who dictate taste.

But that's where it ends. Bukowski was much braver than I could ever be. He was also stronger, more resilient, less afraid and harder to damage.

And, he was more irresponsible then me.

On his epitaph, the words "Don't Try" are engraved. When watching a movie loosely based on his life or when reading about him or reading from him, it becomes clear that these words are not supposed to be a discouragement. He's not asking people to literally give up; rather, he is saying that there is no such thing as "try": You either do it or you don't do it.

In the movie, Matt Dillon plays Chinaski with a superb drunkeness, declaring at one point that "if you're going to try, go all the way." Bukowksi, the author of those words that spilled from Dillon's mouth, never tried too hard to do anything except drink and write, and when he indulged himself he found that the only way to go was full throttle.

I am still in my infancy concerning this. Even though I know the best things happen to me when I give up control, that part of me that labors and tries is always resisting the ebb and flow of the universe.

Bukowski resisted a different kind of flow: He staved off the Walking Death of thousands of men who deferred their own dreams and embraced "normalcy", whatever that means. As my friend Paulie would say, "He wasn't designed to work."

Some say that Bukowski glamorized and exaggerated the details of his life; I say that he possessed a genuine love of squalor and did what any writer worth his or her salt should do in that situation: Communicate to others as to why there is beauty in the gutter.

He also accented the terrors of the streets but in a muted, detached manner. His fiction and poetry were not meant to chronicle hard living with a hyper-realistic portrayal. He was not making a documentary about the denizens of the slums of Los Angeles.

He was writing a loving and fitting tribute, at all times.

Bukowski (and J.D. Salinger, whom I commented on yesterday) were two writers whose works were so perfectly realized (in my opinion) that when I first read them I decided afterwards to never pick up a book by either man for at least another decade. I did this to ensure that I would not become a blind disciple of these men. There was a hint of jealousy in this decision as well, because they both seemed to capture the kind of writing I envisioned for myself.

Catcher In The Rye was the novel I always wanted to write; Bukowski's poems were the kind that I was always striving to create. By delaying my eventual immersion in their works, I think it helped me to not copy their styles. I ended up writing like them anyway, but not out of imitation.

I realize that it is hubris to compare myself to J.D. Salinger and Charles Bukowski. But then again, for years I made a conscious effort to NOT read them, so I think it's only fair to open up the possibilities of comparison.

In other words, I didn't try to write like them-- it just happened, just as I didn't try to get this job, just as I didn't try to meet single and available women last year.

I think I'm on to something here.

Don't try to have a great weekend-- just have it.