She wasn’t really a cop, she was a clerk-cop. And she started coming in and telling me about a guy who wore a purple stick pin and was a “real gentleman.” “Well,” I’d ask, “how was old ...

in the winter walking on my ceiling my eyes the size of street… I have 4 feet like a mouse but wash my own underwear—bearded and hungover and a hard-on and no lawy…

take a writer away from his typewr… and all you have left is the sickness which started him

sit on this bench and look at the sea and the freaks and the lovers. need new eyes a new mouth new pillows, a new woman.

red-eyed and dizzy as I the bird came flying all the way from Egypt at 5 o’clock in the morning, and Maria almost stumbled on her s…

It was 12 hours a night, plus supervisors, plus clerks, plus the fact that you could hardly breathe in that pack of flesh, plus stale baked food in the “non-profit” cafeteria. Plus the ...

she bent over the side of the bed and opened the portfolio along the side of the wall. we were drinking. she said, “you promised me these

a house with 7 or 8 people living in it getting up the rent. there’s a stereo never used and a set of bongos

To pacify Lydia I agreed to go to Muleshead, Utah. Her sister was camping in the mountains. The sisters actually owned much of the land. It had been inherited from their father. Glendol...

bet on #6, I try red, I stare at… wonder what Chekhov would do, and… blue plates sit eating the carnage… and look very much like Russians a… my left tit and try to smile like…

Bruckner wasn’t bad even though he got down on his knees and proclaimed Wagner the master.

We came in low over Kansas City, the pilot said the temperature was 20 degrees, and there I was in my thin California sports coat and shirt, lightweight pants, summer stockings, and hol...

I walked into the counselor’s office. It was Eddie Beaver sitting behind the desk. The clerks called him “Skinny Beaver.” He had a pointed head, pointed nose, pointed chin. He was all p...

you have to have it or the walls w… in. you have to give everything up, th… away, everything away. you have to look at what you look…

if I suffer at this typewriter think how I’d feel among the lettuce-pickers of Salinas?