I had to fly to Illinois to give a reading at the University. I hated readings, but they helped with the rent and maybe they helped sell books. They got me out of east Hollywood, they g...

the German hotel was very strange… double doors to the rooms, very th… looked the park and the vasser ter… it was usually too late for breakf… would be everywhere changing sheet…

then there was the time in New Orleans I was living with a fat woman, Marie, in the French Quarter and I got very sick.

keep remembering the horses under the moon keep remembering feeding the horse… sugar white oblongs of sugar

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...

By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing and walk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday. There were two pillows on my chair. I ...

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...

the sun slides down through the sh… have a pair of black shoes and a p… brown shoes. can hardly remember the girls of m… there is numb blood pulsing throug…

in San Francisco the landlady, 80… Victrola up the stairway and I pl… until they beat on the walls. there was a large bucket in the ce… filled with beer and winebottles;

the soldiers march without guns the graves are empty peacocks glide in the rain down stairways march great men smi… there is food enough and rent enou…

here I’ll be 55 in a week. what will I write about

Then the supervisor moved us to a new aisle. We had been there ten hours. “Before you begin,” the soup said, "I want to tell you some– thing. Each tray of this type of mail must be stuc...

sun-stroked women without men on a Santa Monica Monday; the men are working or in jail or insane;