Post Office
Charles Bukowski
Women
Charles Bukowski
Women
What happens when a persona built on failure suddenly succeeds: Chinaski, famous at last, and no better at living.
- 1978
About Charles Bukowski
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeWomen, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1978, finds Henry Chinaski — Charles Bukowski's fictional alter ego — transformed by late literary fame. He is no longer the ignored postal clerk: women know who he is, universities invite him to read, and there is money. The novel is a serial account of the relationships that followed, written with a frankness that made it Bukowski's most controversial book and has kept it argued over since. It is also, under the sex, a study of a man watching success arrive too late to fix him: the persona was built on rejection, and the book asks what is left of it when the rejection stops.
The story, in more detail
Chinaski, now in his fifties and a name in the poetry world, moves through affairs with women who write to him, meet him at readings, or find him through his books. The portraits are drawn from Bukowski's real relationships of the 1970s, thinly disguised and often unflattering to everyone involved, the narrator first of all.
The novel's running joke is that fame has changed the circumstances and not the man: the drinking, the racetrack, and the self-sabotage survive success intact. Its ending points toward the steadier life Bukowski was beginning with Linda Lee Beighle, who appears in fictional form as the book closes.
Why we recommend it
Success as a subject
Few novels study what recognition does to a persona built on failure; Women does it from inside, without asking to be liked.
The key to late Bukowski
The fame, the readings, and the women of this novel are the circumstances of everything he wrote afterward.
What this book explores
Timeline
1970s
The relationships of Bukowski's first famous decade supply the novel's material.
1976
Bukowski meets Linda Lee Beighle, who appears in fictional form near the novel's end.
1978
Black Sparrow Press publishes Women; the same September, Bukowski makes his Paris promotional trip.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Black Sparrow Press
- 1978
- Paperback
- Ecco
- 2007
- 9780061542459
Reader reviews
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Read our takeWomen: frequently asked questions
What is Women by Charles Bukowski about?
The third Henry Chinaski novel finds Bukowski's fictional alter ego famous in his fifties, and follows the serial relationships that came with late literary success — drawn closely and explicitly from Bukowski's own life in the 1970s.
Is Women misogynistic?
The novel's sexual politics have been argued over since 1978. The portrayals of women can be tender, funny, vicious and cruel; some readers take the exaggerated masculinity as partly satirical, since Chinaski is constantly ridiculous and defeated, while others find that satire does not excuse the cruelty. Both readings are part of the book's history.
Are the women in the novel real people?
Most are fictionalized versions of women from Bukowski's life in the 1970s, including the poet and sculptor Linda King and, near the end, Linda Lee Beighle, whom he later married. The transformations are thin and were not always welcome.
Do I need to read the other Chinaski novels first?
It helps. Women lands harder after Post Office and Factotum, because its subject is what fame does to the man those novels built.
When was Women published?
Black Sparrow Press published it in 1978 — the same year French publishers brought Bukowski to Paris for the television appearance that made him famous in France.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Women, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Women
NovelCharles Bukowski, 1978Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Charles Bukowski (Poetry Foundation)
WebsiteUsed forBiographical and bibliographic backbone: the career arc, the Black Sparrow relationship, and the book's place in it.
3Charles Bukowski timeline (bukowski.net)
WebsiteUsed forPublication dates, publishers, and chronology checked against the bukowski.net timeline.
4Charles Bukowski: books and chapbooks (Verdant Press checklist)
WebsiteUsed forBibliographic details cross-checked against the Verdant Press checklist.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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