Don’t Try — The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski

Born in 1920 in Germany and having later migrated to the United States in 1923, Charles Bukowski was a 20th-century German-American writer and a poet known for his unfiltered, potent and often crude takes on life.

As a German immigrant, Bukowski was condemned and ridiculed for his clothing and accent during his childhood, ostracised as an outcast. Often beaten by his father, the circumstances of abuse and loneliness imposed onto him laid the groundwork for his perspective on life and his desire to express himself as a writer.

Bukowski tried being a writer all his life, writing thousands and hundreds of stories, most of which often found little to no success. Bukowski worked various blue-collar jobs for several years and he continued writing all those years. Even with no real sight of success or even just creating a living from writing, Bukowski continued writing nearly every day before work for years.

Bukowski started getting recognition for his writings when he was in his fifties. It was at this time that he started making a living out of writing. On the tail end of a traditional career, at 50 years old Bukowski started his career. He finally became successful as a writer. It took years and years of undying effort and writings to work in his favor so he could gain traction and find success.

. . .

It is ironic that his tombstone today reads “Don’t try.”

How could a man who became his idea of himself; a man who, although it took a while found immense respect and recognition for his craft, all because of his relentless trying; how could this man leave the words “Don’t try” as his final offering?

In a letter to his friend William Packard, Bukowski writes-

“Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair…

…When everything works best it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that…

…We work too hard. We try too hard.

Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. It’s been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.”

Bukowski implies that if you have to try to try, if you have to try to care about something, to try to want something, perhaps you don’t care about it, perhaps you don’t want it. It’s not that Bukowski didn’t try, he never tried to be something he wasn’t. He tried to be a writer, but he didn’t try to want to be a writer.

If the pain and endurance of the process of becoming something do not feel worth it and if you are not compelled to do it even in the face of rejection, it is here that Bukowski would say “Don’t try”. But if it does, if the thought of not doing it hurts more than suffering through the process, if the thought of life without it, or not having tried it at all terrifies you. If it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you are not trying, perhaps Bukowski might say here, “Try” and “If you are going to try, go all the way.”

. . .

so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

-Charles Bukowski