How Charles Bukowski and George Mackay Brown Wrote Against Modernity

Factory workers clocking off, 1943: image by Marjory Collins via under license

Bukowski’s War Against Literary Pretension

The literary styles of Charles Bukowski and George Mackay Brown could hardly be more different.

Bukowski famously rejected many traditional poetic devices, particularly metaphor, preferring instead a stark, metonymic style built from concrete details and stripped-down narration. Brown, by contrast, embraced metaphor and simile, using vivid imagery to transform ordinary Orcadian life into something lyrical and symbolic.

Yet despite these differences, both writers pursued a similar goal: authenticity. Neither trusted ornate literary artifice. Both sought to capture lived experience honestly, particularly the lives of working-class people often ignored by mainstream literature.

Bukowski in 1988: image by Artgal73 via under license

Bukowski’s hostility toward metaphor reflects his broader rejection of institutions, conventions, and literary pretension. His poems avoid abstraction and moral commentary, relying instead on accumulation of detail and emotional implication. The power emerges not from what is explicitly stated, but from what is left unsaid.

A clear example appears in Retired. On the surface, the poem is deceptively mundane. Bukowski describes his father devouring heavy meals while endlessly fantasising about retirement:

“pork chops, said my father, love

pork chops!”

The poem moves through fragments of observation rather than direct analysis. Bukowski never openly condemns his father’s values, yet the emotional force builds through repetition and detail:

“he always talked about retirement…”

Retirement becomes a kind of secular afterlife, the promised reward for a lifetime of labour that never actually arrives. The poem ultimately functions less as an elegy than as a quiet critique of the American capitalist dream. His father’s devotion to work, “never missing a day / of work”, appears not noble, but tragic. Even the slipping necktie becomes symbolic of conformity and submission to social expectation.

Bukowski’s refusal of overt explanation is precisely what gives the poem its force. He allows objects, habits, and routines to reveal character instead of relying on poetic flourish or moral instruction.

Work, Capitalism, and the Horror of Routine

Bukowski’s sparse style reaches another level in Looking for a Job, a poem that perfectly encapsulates his hostility toward work and capitalism. The premise is simple: the speaker reluctantly searches for employment because he needs money, despite having no desire whatsoever to work.

“hell, you don’t want a job

and I said, hell, no, but I need money”

Workers from munitions factory knitting: image by Archives of Ontario via under license

Again, Bukowski avoids elaborate metaphor. Instead, he creates emotional tension through disorientation and repetition. During the narrator’s bus journey to the workplace, he writes:

“I watched the numbers

and soon the numbers got closer”

The “numbers” are never explained. Their vagueness creates a growing sense of inevitability, as though the narrator is being mechanically dragged toward a fate he cannot escape. The workplace itself becomes almost infernal:

“there were shots of lightning and thunder”

The actual job remains undefined, reduced to fragments of machinery, noise, darkness, and industrial monotony. Bukowski’s stripped-back language mirrors the dehumanising experience of labour itself. Excessive lyricism would undermine the realism he is trying to construct.

This is where Bukowski’s metonymic style becomes crucial. Rather than philosophising about capitalism directly, he allows objects, spaces, and routines to communicate the psychological violence of modern work. The result feels more authentic precisely because it avoids abstraction.

Brown’s Poetry of Community and Observation

Brown approaches poetry from almost the opposite direction. Where Bukowski strips away metaphor, Brown embraces it. Yet his poetry is never overly ornate or inaccessible. His style remains grounded in the rhythms of ordinary speech and the communal life of Orkney.

Brown often presents himself less as a philosopher than as an observer quietly recording the rituals, landscapes, and stories of island life. His poems rarely announce grand arguments, yet beneath their calm surfaces lie profound concerns about memory, faith, community, and modernity.

A poem such as Hamnavoe Market demonstrates Brown’s ability to combine simplicity with rich metaphorical resonance. The poem follows a group of men descending upon a market town, creating a portrait of communal Orcadian life that is humorous, lively, and quietly melancholic.

The opening immediately establishes warmth and movement:

“They drove to the Market with ringing pockets”

The phrase “ringing pockets” evokes not only coins, but anticipation, celebration, and temporary freedom. Brown’s metaphors emerge naturally from everyday experience rather than drawing attention to themselves.

Later, Brown writes:

“Folster found a girl

Who put wounds on his face and throat,

Small and diagonal, like red doves.”

The image is strikingly beautiful yet ambiguous. The “red doves” simultaneously suggest romance, sexuality, violence, and sin. Brown refuses to clarify which interpretation is correct. Like Bukowski, he often leaves emotional meaning unresolved, trusting the reader to interpret events independently.

Alcohol, another recurring connection between the two writers, also appears throughout the poem:

“He woke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.”

Unlike Bukowski’s confessional style, however, Brown usually maintains distance between poet and subject. Even when drawing from experiences close to his own struggles with alcohol and depression, he resists turning the poem into autobiography. The result feels communal rather than individualistic.

Metaphor, Memory, and the Orcadian Imagination

Ring of Brodgar: image by Stevekeiretsu via under license

Brown’s gift for metaphor appears most clearly in the small details. One of his simplest images is also one of his most effective:

“ate sweet fog from a stick”

Literally, the line describes candy floss. Yet Brown transforms it into something distinctly Orcadian. “Fog” evokes the island climate, the surrounding sea, and the maritime world that saturates his poetry. In just a few words, the ordinary becomes mythic.

The same gift appears in Beachcomber, where Brown catalogues objects washed ashore by the sea:

“Monday I found a boot —

Rust and leather.

I gave it back to the sea, to dance in.”

Rocky coast: image by Dave Croker via under license

The abandoned boot hints at shipwreck, disappearance, or death, yet Brown immediately softens the darkness by personifying the sea and imagining it “dancing” in the boot. The sea becomes both destroyer and companion.

Elsewhere, Brown writes:

“Next winter

It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.”

In a single line, driftwood becomes a symbol of the entire human cycle: life, death, labour, and renewal. Brown consistently elevates ordinary materials into symbols of communal continuity and cultural memory.

Two Writers, Two Responses to Modernity

Ultimately, Bukowski and Brown reveal two radically different ways of writing about ordinary life. Bukowski strips language down to raw observation to expose the emptiness of modern labour and capitalist routine. Brown uses metaphor and imagery to preserve memory, ritual, and community against the erosion of modernity.

One sees alienation everywhere; the other searches for continuity and meaning.

Yet both writers remain deeply committed to the same people: workers, drinkers, outsiders, and forgotten communities living on the margins of modern society.