A Following

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

External Voices and Communication

Whether one is looking at the relationship between the different personae in the poem or at the poem’s relationship to its reader, “A Following” presents communication and interpersonal relationships as highly mediated. Neither Chinaski nor the reader ever learn the names of either of the two callers. The poem instead presents them as disembodied voices, appearing in the middle of the night “to haunt, to startle, and waylay,” as William Wordsworth put it. The poem likewise foregrounds the technical means of communication: telephones; poems and magazines as material objects; an address written on the back of an envelope, and so on. Conversely, at no point does the poem disclose Chinaski or his callers’ inner emotional state. All forms of expression are wholly externalized, down to Chinaski’s final summary remark about lonely people, an extremely general statement describing an outward situation that betrays Chinaski’s reaction to the scene he has just experienced only in the most oblique and indirect way. The overall sense this distancing conveys is that the process of communicating our interior states to one another is extremely delicate, tenuous, and unreliable.

Vulgarity

A large portion of the comedic effect in “A Following” comes from the third caller’s repeated use of profanity and coarse language. Bukowski does not use explicit language for shock value alone, however, but as a means of prying open the question of literary representations’ ability to convey experience truthfully. This dynamic can be seen in the way the callers’ insulting and vulgar language, their individual character or personalities, their resemblance to Chinaski, and the poem’s representation of all these things reciprocally imply one another. For example, the third caller’s curses prompt Chinaski to inquire after their drunken state, which in turn leads the editor to point out that they share this trait with Chinaski, and this then seems to inspire Chinaski to grant their request. Underlying all these moments is the question of whether representations and language can accurately portray us as we truly are behind the more polished public identities we present to others. Truth in Chinaski’s writing depends on it not being merely another instance of polished self-presentation or performance. This is in part why Chinaski’s writing becomes the central object of the third caller’s insults and denunciation. Vulgarity or improper behavior here point toward the possibility of honesty and forthrightness, even as this possibility is complicated by the presence of irony.

Night

While the poem generally avoids offering any heavy handed or elevated symbolic language in favor of more prosaic and denotative descriptions of facts, the final word “nights” (Line 35), in drawing the reader’s attention back to the poem’s larger dramatic context of a late-night phone call, does carry a range of metaphorical implications. One of Bukowski’s major influences, Louis Ferdinand Celine, titled one of his major works Journey to the End of the Night. The novel describes the travels of Ferdinand Bardamu, based loosely on Celine, through the trenches of World War I, through colonial Africa and to the auto factories of Detroit and the Parisian suburbs. Celine was lauded for his innovative use of slang and pessimistic tone in his effort to portray existential struggles that define the human condition. In the more expansive, editorializing summary of the poem’s final lines, Chinaski’s remark about individuals coming to terms with their lonely nights frames the latter term not only as a particular time of day but as an existential state.