Henry Chinaski, the Original Hipster: Maturity & Individuality in Ham on Rye

From dabbling with drugs and sex to existential crises à la Catcher in The Rye, coming­ of­ age novels have dug into ground that no other genres dared touch. The most famous coming ­of ­age novelists have fearlessly plunged the depths of the tortured adolescent mind, extracting teenage experiences and, perhaps more prominently, teenage inexperience that have captivated us, shocked us, and infuriated some.

Charles Bukowski's legacy was built largely upon coming ­of ­age territory. The work that thrust him into public scrutiny was the work that no writer had dared produce before. His semi­autobiographical novel Ham on Rye, first published in 1982, showcases the style and content that is both trademark Bukowski and revolutionary within the coming­of­age genre. Over a backdrop of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the troubled Henry Chinaski (a caricature of Bukowski himself) brings the reader along on his unspoken journey to self­realization and individualism. Through a first-person narrative that is raw, uncut, and often unresponsive to itself, Ham on Rye takes the coming­of­age experience back to its basic elements and then some, as we attempt to understand Henry's growth. Central to Ham On Rye are the motifs of fighting, alcohol experimentation, sexual frustration, and the eternal adolescent fight to break free from the

structure of whatever we know best—in Henry's case, middle­class American hypocrisy.

Henry's early exposure to violence and abuse set the precedents for his behaviour towards others and, on an unspoken emotional level, his feelings toward himself. Born and raised in the desolation of the 1920s, Henry is in many ways a personification of the Great Depression itself: calloused, cold and lacking hope, setting forth with survival in mind. Henry (Bukowski) narrates his dismal youth in a straightforward prose that often seems shockingly aloof to its heavy, unnerving content. In one grotesque scene, Jimmy Hatcher, who in many ways acts as a foil to Henry's character, performs a sexual act on his girlfriend's dog before urinating in her family's milk jug. Henry relays the strange event through dialogue only, without personal reaction, and in a painfully ironic closing line he even agrees with another friend who says of Jimmy, “That guy's really got it made” (163). Bukowski likely used this narrative technique to enhance the shock value of the story and baffle readers, however, it is also telling of Henry's emotional desensitization to the traumas and burdens of his life. This hardening of Henry's character progresses with the story, as his father's beatings become more frequent and “always [...] without real reason” (39), as he continues to be ostracized by his peers, as his chronic acne sets in and he comes to regard himself as a monster. Henry turns to violence because he has no shyness to it, and because proving his strength lessens the hurt of his incredibly low self­esteem.

Henry's desensitization is inconsistent, however, in that he often shown to have a sense of compassion towards those around him—specifically the underdogs—that most of his peers lack. In one depressing scene an adult stands idly by as the neighbourhood boys circle his dog, encouraging it to attack a frightened kitten it has cornered. After years of being the subject to bullying harassment, Henry understand understands victimization; he is sickened by his friends' enthusiasm and commiserates with the cat. Somewhat listlessly he attempts to break up the act of savagery, to no avail. Henry's hidden sensitivity permeates in his sharp social perceptions and critiques. Henry could be seen by some readers as a static character who is just a bitter, thoughtless misanthrope, but I believe Bukowski would have known better than to create a strictly two­dimensional protagonist. When read into, it becomes evident that Henry has been scarred very deeply by the social constructs of his youth, which results a bitterness that is not actually desensitization but rather, hyper­sensitivity. This triggers Henry's turn to alcohol to numb the pain, alcohol being “the only thing that kept a man from feeling stunned and useless” (244). A reader could go so far to say that his emotional hardness is mostly a front, used by Henry to feel empowered or to feel at one with the social prototype—characteristic of the novel's time, yet still prevalent—of 'a real man.' Perhaps, even, under the pressure to “[choose] between one evil or another” (174) Henry has chosen to fight evil with feigned evil. The novel's title entertains this general idea. Besides being a cheap sandwich, “Ham on Rye” is a description of Henry's character—an actor, boozed up on whiskey. What is unique about Ham on Rye is Bukowski's subtle way of constantly altering our perception of Henry—the way we see him is, perhaps, as inconsistent as the way he sees himself.

What remains entirely consistent throughout the novel, however, is Henry's disgust towards his parents and, on a larger scale, the American “family structure” (192)—a portrait of a man with a loyal wife, two kids, suburban house, well­paying job. Henry's progressive disenchantment with American middle­class life culminates in one of his few interior monologues, in which he decidedly rejects these “fractional and illusionary gains” (193) but delays setting forth a plan for his future. This is the tragic flaw that shapes (and restricts) Henry's intellectual growth and makes him a perfect anti­hero—he is fiercely opposed to just about everything, often for arbitrary reasons. He goes so far as to join a pro-­Nazi group for the sole purpose of not being left-­wing with everyone else. Yet in spite of his general dissatisfaction, Henry makes no effort to better himself or his surroundings, illustrated in his frequent thoughts of becoming a bank robber or bag man. “You'll never be a writer if you hide from reality,” (259) Becker tells Henry. Becker, a high-achieving, passionate writer, acts in many ways as a foil to Henry, highlighting the lack of motivation and open­mindedness that limit Henry's potential as both a writer and as a person. Henry's sexual frustration is a side effect of these unhealthy traits—although he laments that no woman would date someone so ugly or with such a low­end job, not once over the course of the story does Henry actually makes a conscious effort to pick up a woman. He even goes so far as to reject their advances, as if trying to prove some kind of point that he is in charge. There is reason to believe that Henry does, in fact, want to lead a comfortable and 'average' life, but he has succumbed to a contradictory cross between doubt and dissidence. He wants to achieve but believes himself to be destined for failure; he is unwilling to make the effort because he does not want to achieve by someone else's standards. Henry is a martyr for individuality. In Henry's eyes, there is no grey area between complete idiosyncrasy and wholehearted, blind conformity.

Narrated by a protagonist who tends to see the world in only black and white, Ham on Rye takes universal adolescent experiences and brings them to some of their farthest extremes. Henry's coming­of­age journey is that of a child who grew up quickly and miserably, trained by experience to fight whatever threats come his way. The novel, to which mindless violence is a central theme, appropriately culminates in the outbreak of World War II, whose legitimacy Henry questions vigorously. Bukowski, whether intentionally or not, leaves the reader contemplating the similar omnipresent question— applicable to the story as to the real world—“what are we fighting for?” Henry, critical of war and the rat race, ironically does not realize the extent to which his own acts of violence and immature single­mindedness inhibit his growth. Though his social observations are sharp, Henry is too naive to know how to make sense of them. By the end of the novel, it becomes clear that Henry is held back not simply by hopeless circumstance, but by his uncompromising resistance to society itself. The reader, on the other hand, is left considering which flaw is more self destructive—blind conformity, or blind dissent. Ham on Rye reminds us that there is no obvious balance between these two evils.

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