19 pages • 38 minutes read
Charles BukowskiSo You Want to Be a Writer?
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Sacrifice
In Stanza 1 of “so you want to be a writer?” Bukowski explains why someone shouldn’t be a writer. If someone writes for fame, money, or sex, they won’t make a writer worth reading. In Stanza 4, Bukowski reproves writers "consumed with self- / love” (Lines 41-42). Economic advancement and personal pleasure are not central to writing. Writing is not a means to gain material comfort nor privileges. For Bukowski, writing is a sacrifice. Dismissing self-glorification, the true writer demands self-abnegation.
A real writer can’t live a pleasant life like other people. Their surrender to the force of writing separates them from conventional dictates. They can’t share their work with friends, family, or romantic partners. Instead, they yield to the "rocket” (Line 50) in their soul and the "burning” (Line 56) in their stomach.
According to the poem, the sacrifice produces no tangible benefits. While Bukowski scorns false writers, he doesn’t praise true writers. The genuine writer receives neither plaudits nor prizes. Bukowski paints the true writer as beset by internal turbulence. In the end, the true writer has led a life of sacrifice they could not escape. There is no material reward for them. Either the writer passes away or the force of writing vanishes. Bukowski's bleak tone bolsters the theme of sacrifice and reinforces the hardscrabble life of the true writer.
Faith and Religion
The theme of sacrifice intricately links to themes of faith and religion. The relationship between the writer and writing mirrors the dynamic between god and god’s believers. In both cases, the bond requires patience and faith. Bukowski advises the potential writer to "wait patiently” (Line 30). When it is "truly time” (Line 58), the gift will reveal itself. For these lines, Bukowski turns the writer into a receptacle. The writer is not an active agent. As a passive medium, the true writer can only wait for the writing gene to manifest in them.
Many religious poets emphasize faith, patience, and passivity. The English priest and metaphysical poet George Herbert authored a well-known poem called "Affliction (I)” (1633). Like the writer in Bukowski’s poem, the believer in Herbert’s poem must wait. Speaking to god, Herbert’s speaker admits, "[W]hat thou wilt do with me / None of my books will show.” The speaker doesn’t know why god has made their life so miserable, and they admit they have no way of acquiring a better understanding. The best the speaker can do is tolerate the pain and have faith that what they are enduring has some purpose.
The elusive plans of god match the mystery of writing. Bukowski doesn’t explain how a writer is "chosen” (Line 59) or why it "will do it by / itself (Lines 59-60). As with god, writing functions in obscure ways. The believer and writer have to put up with suffering and be ready to be chosen when/if their time comes.
The work of John Milton draws connections between faith, patience, and selection. In the sonnet "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (1673), Milton worries that there’s more that he could be doing to "serve” god. Milton thinks about the people who work hard for god across lands and oceans, and he wonders why he stands around. Milton concludes: "They also serve who only stand and wait.” As with writing, religion doesn’t automatically require action. In Milton’s sonnet and Bukowski’s poem, a person has to have faith in their calling and that the time for action will eventually arrive.
Milton’s poem also alludes to distinction. Milton is not like the other followers of god. He’s not laboring for god at a "bidding speed.” Milton portrays himself as separate from the other believers. Milton is special. Bukowski presents the true writer as special. Such a writer stands out from the myriad other writers laboring to make money or improve their position in the material world. Like Milton, the true writer in Bukowski’s poem separates themself from the pack. The faith that they have been chosen differentiates them from the masses.
Childbirth and Masculinity
In Conversations with Norman Mailer (University Press of Mississippi, 1988), the truculent 20th century American writer stated, "[w]riting books is the closest that men ever come to childbearing.” Bukowski’s poem expands on Mailer’s thought. From the start, Bukowski’s poem suggests the theme of gestation and birth. Perhaps it’s hyperbolic to say that babies come “bursting out of” (Line 1) a person, but babies do come out "unasked” (Line 4). Babies don’t confer with the owner of the womb beforehand. As with the writer carrying the gift to write, the person carrying the baby is at the mercy of what's inside them.
Bukowski presents the creation of writing as violent and unpleasant. Childbirth, too, has been depicted as disorderly. Pregnancy can be scary and unpredictable. In The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Knopf Doubleday, 2007), the 20th century American poet wrote, "The horror, day by day more sure, of being pregnant.” In Maggie Nelson’s familial mémoire The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015), the American poet/critic depicts pregnancy as invasive and all-consuming. Bukowski develops the theme of childbirth by continually presenting writing as a visceral, unruly act emerging out of someone.
Certain lines in Bukowski’s poem imply that the writer giving birth is a man. In Stanza 1, Bukowski writes that a true writer doesn’t write to have sex with women. In Stanza 3, Bukowski states that a genuine writer doesn’t have to read their work to their wife or girlfriend. The presence of these feminine, heterosexual tropes indicates that Bukowski is addressing a man, so the theme of childbirth ties back to Mailer’s assertion that, for the male writer, writing approximates giving birth. The presence of the “boyfriend” (Line 34), though, leaves open the possibility that Bukowski is speaking to women or homosexual men. Considering the poem in a contemporary context, the argument could certainly be made that a woman might also be writing because they “want / women in [their] bed” (Lines 17-18).
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By Charles Bukowski
