Scar Tissue – Anthony Kiedis (with Larry Sloman) (2004)

It took me a couple days after finishing this book to realise what it was actually about.  On the surface, Scar Tissue is the autobiography of the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers – one the of the most successful rock bands of the past twenty years and one of only a very few acts who made their name in the 90’s that have managed to maintain their relevancy this far into the new millennium. So it would be an interesting enough story on its own, considering that the Chili Peppers have gone through several reinventions, or rather, resurrections - but this is not the main thrust of the book.

Rather, Scar Tissue is primarily about Anthony Kiedis’s life long battle with addiction that started around the time his father handed him his first joint, aged 11. The fact that he eventually became a superstar and multi-millionaire gives the tale a backdrop that it might not have had were Kiedis simply another junkie on the street. It is this fact that makes the book such a strange read but perhaps it is also the key to understanding the whole point, which the role that the addiction plays in the life of the addict. Here you have one of the most successful artists in recent time, yet all his achievements, relationships, falls and recoveries can only be seen through the lens of a deadly craving that is either running full blown or in a temporary remission.

That is not to say that there are no genuine insights into his career and that of the Chili Peppers’ – the band’s first shows, the coming and going of members, the albums and era defining songs such as Give It Away, Under The Bridge and Scar Tissue – but everything finds its place in the shadow of Kiedis’s personal battle. For better or worse, as it must be for such sufferer’s and for those around them, the tale ultimately becomes a never ending roundabout of recovery and relapse. By the time it ends on a high, you are tuned in enough to expect that the next low is just around the corner. It also leaves you with a strange discomfort (as in Bukowski’s Ham On Rye), that this is book is written by one of the few that managed, or in this case was privaledged enough, to tell his story. What about all the others that didn’t?

Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski (1982)

Ham On Rye is an almost-autobiography - both a loose memoir of his Charles Bukowski’s life up until the end of his teens as well as the story of a young man growing up and finding himself completely lost in an unforgiving society.

The novel is a first person account of the youth of Henry Chinaski – an alter-ego Bukowski often used in his other works - growing up in depression era America as the son of an abusive, regularly unemployed father and helpless mother. Over the course of the book, Chinaski moves from one disheartening failure to the next as he tries to navigate his way through life as a strange kid, ill at ease with his surroundings and on the wrong side of the tracks of American society. Through his encounters with the street, school, violence, sex, alcohol and an extreme and debilitating case of acne Chinaski lurches from one misadventure to the next, leaving him lost and bewildered by a pitiless world. 

The genius of Ham And Rye is that Chinaski’s redemption does not arrive on its pages. Even though the future of the author is well known - Bukowski went on to become one of the most celebrated poets of the 20^th century - his writing and his discovery of and love for literature are mentioned but barely explored. Rather the story is of a life that both starts off as difficult and that then provides very little chance of salvation. It is in giving the reader no more than a hint of his own future that Bukowski presents not only a memoir but also the devastating story of an everyday, nameless, down-and-out American youth on a road that can only lead to nowhere. Ham On Rye is as much the story of Charles Bukowski, the one that made it, as it is the story of all of those that didn’t. It leaves you startled, in a sort of shocked awe, at how many others must have been, and surely still are, left out there.

From the point of view that is actually Bukowski’s story, it is an amazing insight into his early life. The fact that someone can be born so out of place in this world - and continue from that starting point to move even further down the wrong path - yet still somehow manage to find his place is remarkable. For those who have read his poetry (I can recommend Pleasures Of The Damned, essentially  a Best Of collection) the realness, dark dark humour and desperation of his work is only reinforced by a reading of Ham On Rye and the realization that this is actually how he lived.