I got a letter in the mail. It was addressed from Hollywood. Dear Chinaski: I’ve just read almost all your books. I work as a typist in a place on Cherokee Ave. I’ve hung your picture i...

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…

the balance is preserved by the sn… the Santa Monica cliffs; the luck is in walking down Wester… and having the girls in a massage parlor holler at you, “Hello, Swe…

the men phone and ask me that. are you really Charles Bukowski the writer? they ask. I’m a sometimes writer, I say, most often I don’t do anything.

call it love stand it up in the failing light put it in a dress pray sing beg cry laugh

The voices of the people were the same, no matter where you carried the mail you heard the same things over and over again. “You’re late, aren’t you?” “Where’s the regular carrier?” “He...

The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg, I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under the...

While working Dorsey station I heard some of the old timers needling Big Daddy Greystone about how he’d had to buy a tape recorder in order to learn his schemes. Big Daddy had read the ...

they stop out front here looks as if the car is on fire the smoke blazes blue from the hoo… the motor sounds like cannon shots the car humps wildly

It was another Sunday that we got into the Model-T in search of my Uncle John. “He has no ambition,” said my father. “I don’t see how he can hold his god-damned head up and look people ...

red summers and black satin charcoal and blood ringing the sheets while snails are stepped on and moths go batty