there are these small cliffs above the sea and it is night, late night; I have been unable to sleep, and with my car above me

I’m big I suppose that’s why my women alwa… small but this 6 foot goddess who deals in real estate

A day or so later I got a poem in the mail from Lydia. It was a long poem and it began: Come out, old troll, Come out of your dark hole, old troll, Come out into the sunlight with us an...

Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears– Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone all around town putting in dozens of a...

ah, Merryman, fighter on the docks, killed a man while they were unloa… bananas. mean the man he killed

Our man was there to meet us, Gary Benson. He also wrote poetry and drove a cab. He was very fat but at least he didn’t look like a poet, he didn’t look North Beach or East Village or l...

was much easier to be a genius in… only 3 or 4 literary magazines and… or 5 times you could end up in Ger… you could possibly meet Picasso fo… maybe only Miró.

New Year’s Eve was another bad night for me to get through. My parents had always delighted in New Year’s Eve, listening to it approach on the radio, city by city, until it arrived in L...

When I awakened it was 1:30 pm. I took a bath, got dressed, checked the mail. A letter from a young man in Glendale. "Dear Mr. Chinaski: I am a young writer and I think that I am a good...

I am driving down Wilton Avenue when this girl of about 15 dressed in tight blue jeans that grip her behind like two hand… steps out in front of my car

the rooms at the hospital went for 550 a day. that was for the room alone. the amazing thing, though, was tha… in some of the rooms

We got back to 1010. I had my check. I’d left word that we didn’t want to be disturbed. Tammie and I sat drinking. I’d read 5 or 6 love poems about her. “They knew who I was,” she said....

The next day we picked up some of her stuff at this motel. There was a little dark guy in there with a wart on the side of his nose. He looked dangerous. Hector was sitting on the edge ...