A Following

The literary critic Harold Bloom famously described the creative process as an anxious struggle to overcome the influence of literary precursors and thereby achieve one’s own unique imaginative perspective and expression. From its title onward, “A Following” ironically deflates the notion that great art can influence others to become better people; and in doing the poem aims not so much at a pessimistic view of art or human sociability but rather seeks to access forms of connection capable of bypassing the pretensions of fame and influence, thus overcoming isolation. One is never sure whether the editor is being tongue-in-cheek when he describes himself and his friend as Chinaski’s “following” (Line 3). Nor, given what it would imply both for Chinaski himself and for his relationship to his audience, would one necessarily want to know. Despite the callers’ patent ridiculousness—drunkenly soliciting Chinaski for poems in the middle of the night—both Chinaski and the poem itself largely refrain from making explicit judgements about their situation. On the contrary, Chinaski’s assent to the editor’s request, even after the third caller declares him “AN ASSHOLE” (Line 21), implies affection and solidarity.

The brief exchange over the matter of drinking provides a clearer sense of the basis for Chinaski’s identification with his callers. The callers know from his writing that Chinaski also drinks. In acknowledging this fact (“that’s true…” (Line 20)), Chinaski confronts the question of his own art’s social responsibility. On the one hand, there is the possibility that, in glorifying the now-clichéd type of the tragic-heroic alcoholic writer (see Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, et al.), Chinaski has influenced his audience to mimic such self-destructive behavior. On the other hand, if his writing truthfully reflects the role drinking plays in his life, it may in fact give expression to something authentic that others, such as his callers, might find speaks to their own lived experience. Rather than deciding which one of these possibilities is the “right” one, the poem allows for both. This open-endedness hinges on the unstable relationship between Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s literary mask and persona, and Bukowski himself, and the impossibility of ever closing the gap between the two that the act of writing itself opens.