A Following

Bukowski’s ambiguous word choice in titling the poem “A Following” gestures toward much of the poem’s implicit exploration of the nature of community and influence. The term “following” is used in common parlance or speech to indicate a fanbase, but it also carries connotations related to religious discipleship. The flock of students and acolytes that a religious figure, or even cult leader, instructs can also be described as that person’s “following.” Bob Dylan expressed the general countercultural attitude toward such social hierarchies when he advised his audience, “don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.” One can assume that Bukowski would have found the notion that he had been made into such an object of adulation amusing, if not absurd. The poem itself places this phrase directly in the mouth of one of the drunken, semi-belligerent late-night callers, a contextualization that renders his use in the title facetious and ironic. If these callers do indeed constitute Chinaski’s “following,” their behavior would seem to indicate that they hold such notions somewhat in disdain.

Likewise, the setting and conversational tone of this exchange between Chinaski and his fans—or harassers—similarly undermines conventional notions of fandom. A late-night anonymous phone call is typically as much a cause for alarm and paranoia as it is for forging new friendships. The caller addresses the speaker by his last name, “Chinaski,” bypassing the formality of honorific titles like “Mr.” The rest of the diction is similarly demotic, or common, and colloquial, or informal:

“yeah?”

  “yeah, I got a magazine and want some

poems from you…” (Lines 5-7).

This is hardly the high-class coterie world of literati, wealthy patrons, and upscale artist salons one might expect to find in Europe. The third speaker’s sudden intrusion into Chinaski’s exchange with the editor both solidifies the comedic effect of the overall scene. Correspondingly, it seems also to point toward a more sincere, if ironically distanced, examination of art’s community building power that runs beneath its obscenity and humor.

The speaker describes the unidentified caller who yells “FUCK YOU, CHINASKI” (Line 8), “CHINASKI SUCKS! CHINASKI’S A PRICK!” (Line 14), “CHINASKI’S AN ASSHOLE!” (Line 21), and “CHINASKI WRITES SHIT” (Line 28), as a “voice” (Line 8). Like the term “following,” the word “voice” carries a range of suggestive connotations. Literary critics frequently discuss poetry in terms of the so-called “lyric voice.” The “lyric voice” is the genre convention through which poetic language produces the effect of being directly spoken by a private individual to an intimate audience. Many of poetry’s associations as a genre of emotions, personal psychology, interiority, or subjectivity have been based on this genre convention. Additionally, writers in various genres are often described as “finding their voice” when they produce especially original or high-caliber work. Lastly, the phrase “hearing voices” can suggest either religious inspiration or mental illness, depending on the context. Here the speaker associates this loaded term with the obscenity-slinging anonymous third caller, whose repeated outbursts tilt the speaker’s exchange with the editor from an anomalous professional exchange into overt harassment. The effect is twofold, both reducing the commerce and deal-making of the literary world to the level of childish pranks and raising invective and verbal abuse to the level of high praise.

Part of what makes the caller’s insults an indirect form of tribute and a token of solidarity, suggested in Chinaski’s remark, “I see you have a friend” (Line 10), is that in their crudeness they resemble Chinaski himself. The exchange over drinking draws out the ambiguities of this perverse mirroring. Chinaski asks the editor, “you fellows been drinking?” (Line 17), after the third caller has ramped up his attacks, only to be met with the editor’s rebuttal: “so what?” he answered. “you drink” (Line 19). While the overall dramatic context of late-night harassment and the unflattering light in which it paints the callers would suggest this is a character flaw, Chinaski’s straightforward acknowledgment of the editor’s charge—”that’s true” (Line 20)—makes no such overt value judgments. Instead, even as this disclosure about both Chinaski and his callers implies certain negative implications behind the maxim, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” the mutual recognition of their shared traits seems to motivate Chinaski’s granting the editor’s request, as he responds, “I’ll see what I can do” (Line 27).

Chinaski offers the reader a kind of editorializing summary in the poem’s final lines, albeit one that implies a positive affirmation of human connection precisely through its refusal to gloss over the brute facts of human degradation and isolation. Bukowski’s use of the adverb “certainly” (Line 33) does much of the heavy lifting in these lines, gathering the poem’s preceding ambiguity—as to whether the callers are fans or abusers (of Chinaski or of alcohol); whether Chinaski himself is a great writer or a lonely drunk; whether his work inspires a sense of communal belonging or just boorish behavior—into a final assessment that is as much a dodge as it is a resolution.

The most that Chinaski can affirm after hanging up the phone is that

there are certainly any number of lonely

people without much to do with

their nights (Lines 33-35).

On the surface, this is a fairly bleak diagnosis. And yet the lines’ reticence, or deliberately understated vagueness, allows that ambiguity to suggest something universal in human experience. Rather than getting an alienatingly overbearing declaration about “mankind” or “humanity,” for example, we learn of an indefinite “any number of lonely people” (emphasis added, Line 33). This phrasing holds out the possibility that the preceding exchange might imply something about all people, without forcing it upon anyone. Similarly, “without much to do with / their nights” (Line 35) could refer to the phone call; or to the callers’ lives when they are not bothering Chinaski for poems; or to Chinaski’s process of writing itself; but it can also include what anyone else is or is not doing on any given night. Like the term “night,” used both in Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night and St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul (but here primarily a time of day), Chinaski’s straightforward style, like his demeanor, preserves grand and universal issues by housing them in the utterly ordinary.