Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) is an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He is post-Beat, a perceptive and careful minimalist who comprehends and masters the range from quiet romanticism to soul-scarring cynicism, from farcical despair to sweet appreciations of cats and birds.
From day one of opening Whistlestop in 1985 I have sold Charles Bukowski, and I have guided many young people into the dark and treacherous waters of his poetry and fiction. He is not warm and fuzzy, not heroic, not your intellectual soulmate, often not even likable -- but, then, what business of yours is liking or not liking an artist? He had a stubborn core of humanity, a fear of other people that he hedged with a thorny persona, an honesty of language, and a careful capacity of friendship. He was a singular artist who survived his own vulnerabilities and the peculiar world he was born in.
In the store’s layout I have given Mr. Bukowski a shelf of his own in the North Room. It enabled me to consolidate his various forms of writing — poetry, fiction, and essays, along with biographical books.
Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life
Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life
Charles Bukowski—onetime bum, long-term alcoholic, and author of such now-classic novels as Post Office, Factotum, and Women—rose from obscurity to become world famous. His semi-autobiographical books about low-life America made him a cult figure and culminated in the making of Barfly, a Hollywood film based on his life. In this, the first major biography of Bukowski, Howard Sounes has drawn on years of exhaustive research—including new interviews with virtually all of Bukowski’s friends, his family, and his many lovers, as well as unprecedented access to his private letters and unpublished writing—to reveal the extraordinary true story of the Dirty Old Man of American literature.
Illustrated with over sixty never-before-published photographs, Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life also includes original drawings by Bukowski and unique contributions by friends, including Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, R. Crumb, and Harry Dean Stanton. Interspersed with telling excerpts from Bukowski’s poetry and prose, including work that has never been published, Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life is a must for Bukowski devotees and new readers alike.