Pulp: Charles Bukowski

[Craig Herbertson]

I'd never heard of the poet Bukowski and would never have read this if it hadn't been free. Glad I did. It's not horror but a monument to bad taste by someone literary. As such extremely enjoyable.

Written as a dime gumshoe tale, Bukowski portrays himself as a blundering detective, and mocks his own work as a writer. He hasn't solved any of the mysteries of life or death or indeed done anything meaningful, and is about to die.

He's surrounded by drunks, clowns and failures, some nearly as bad as himself, as he tries to work out who Lady Death is and how to stop from being killed. It has genuinely funny moments and some short bits of quite touching philosophy which is never pretentious and you'll finish it easily in an hour.

[dem bones]

in that case, i can recommend:

Charles Bukowski - Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions And General Tales Of Ordinary Madness (City Lights, 1972, 1974)

Photo: Brad Darby

Charles Bukowski, born 8/16/20, Andernach, Germany. Brought to America at the age of two. Eighteen or 20 books of prose and poetry. Bukowski, after publishing prose in Story and Portfolio, stopped writing for ten years. He arrived in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, hemorrhaging as a climax to a ten-year drinking bout. Some say he didn't die. After leaving the hospital he got a typewriter and began writing again -- this time, poetry. He later returned to prose and gained some fame with his collection, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, which he wrote mainly for the paper, Open City. After 14 years in the Post Office he resigned at age 50, he says, to keep from going insane. He now claims to be unemployable and eats typewriter ribbons. Once married, once di­vorced, many times shacked, he has a seven-year-old daughter.

These dirty and immoral stories appeared mainly in Underground newspapers, with Open City and Nola Express leading in the publica­tion of them. Others have appeared in Evergreen Review, Knight, Pix, Berkeley Barb, Adam, and Adam Reader.

With Bukowski, the votes are still coming in. There seems to be no middle ground -- people seem either to love him or hate him. Tales of his own life and doings are as wild and weird as the very stories he writes. In a sense, Bukowski is a legend in his time . . . a madman, a recluse, a lover ... tender, vicious ... never the same ... these are exceptional stories that come pounding out of his violent and de­praved life . . . horrible and holy . . . you cannot read them and ever come away the same again.


it's been a LONG time since i read this but scanning down the list of titles brought the best the worst of it flooding back. Tales Of Ordinary Madness has its share of conventional(ish) horror and fantasy stories - The Gut Wringing Machine, An Evil Town, Rape! Rape! and Swastika - but he's at his best writing about prison life, or scenes from the drunk tank, or his (and others') downright sleazy sexual experiences. There's plenty of piss-taking at the counter culture (to him, hippies are incredibly straight and as for Jim Morrison's abilities as a "poet" ...) and - more often than might be expected from a man of his rep - some incredibly sad stories like the opener, The Most Beautiful Girl In Town whose desperate need to be appreciated for something other than her looks drives her to self-mutilation and suicide. More often than not, however, we join Bukowski wandering the streets with a hangover, an empty wallet and a throbbing erection in his pants, hoping for some place to park it.

[Craig Herbertson]

definitely one for the growing list then