CABBAGETOWN DIARY - Juan Butler

Here is a book I finished on August 30th 2013 at 12:06am.

The idea to read this was quite by accident.  I always shop for books when I am killing time in town waiting to meet a friend or arriving too early somewhere, for example.  You can safely loiter in the stacks so to speak without anyone asking too many questions.  I have always enjoyed Bukowski books and poems very much, and any time I am in a used book store I try and locate ones that I do not currently own (many reviews here in this blog on Bukowski) So, this particular time in that particular shop they had no Bukowski, but they had this book called Cabbagetown, written by Butler in the same alphabetical area.  I picked it up out of sheer boredom and because a friend of mine named Robin was speaking to me earlier that month about living in an area of Toronto Ontario called Cabbagetown for over 20 years in the late 70's into the early 90's.  Little did I know this book was exactly about that place.

It is some strange sort of coincidence to say the very least, but the author of this book I would easily and safely say is the Canadian equivalent of Charles Bukowski.  How rare a find it was to get my hands on, and how freakishly unbelievable that I was actually looking for Bukowski originally, only to stumble across his mirror image in terms of style and depiction. I consider myself to be almost expert on anything Bukowski so I feel very confident in this claim, but at the same time I was left shocked after I found this book at the fact that I had never before come across Juan Butler.  How on earth did Bukowski stay on my radar so much as a younger reader and this guy slipped past?  As it turns out the author committed suicide at age 38 after suffering with mental illness...which may have been why he remained someone of  mystery. 

This book is written diary style, based on the rather grim life of a young bartender living in Cabbagetown during the 1960's.  It tells of his summer relationship with a young woman named Terry that he randomly meets in the area.  In short, he exposes her to his friends, to his neighborhood, drugs, drunks, drinking, violence, and sex. The book is to have a rather unexpected result in the end...although, as you get to know the character of Michael you begin to expect nothing less from him. 

Just as Bukowski might have written, this book paints a picture of a very seedy counter-culture that made up some of Cabbagetowns finest inhabitants before it became the affluent Toronto neighborhood as it is today.  No Canadian author that I know of to date has been able to depict the true grimy image of rooming-house life that was made famous by writers like Bukowski quite like Juan Butler.  I only wish he was able to offer us more before his death, but there are only three books that I know of that have been published under his name. 

I recommend this book for any fan of Bukowski who is looking for something just a little new and a little more Canadian.  If you like the recipe that Bukowski offered than there is simply no way to deny the 'pleasant' effect this book will have on you.  Even though at times this book leaves you feeling dirty and 'wrong' for what you have read, I feel it serves it's purpose at giving the reader a first hand glimpse into what was at one time one of the worst places to live in Toronto. To survive it would have been something.

This book is 211 pages long and took me a week to finish.  On my sliding scale I give this book a solid 8/10 for it offering me a fresh taste of a style I am already all too familiar with.  I like the fact that I have someone new to blame.  If Tom Wait's doesn't write a song about Juan Bulter, I most certainly will.