Every night was about the same. I’d drive along the coast looking for a place to have dinner. I wanted an expensive place that wasn’t too crowded. I developed a nose for those places. I...

That night I took Tammie to the harness races. We went upstairs to the second deck and sat down. I brought her a program and she stared at it a while. (At the harness races, past perfor...

I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50 a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady—a middle-aged blond—a week’s rent. The toilet and tub we...

she was sitting in the window of room 1010 at the Chelsea in New York, Janis Joplin’s old room. it was 104 degrees

A month went by. R.A. Dwight, the editor of Dogbite Press wrote and asked me to do a foreword to Keesing’s Selected Poems. Keesing, with the help of his death, was at last going to get ...

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 ...

Cecelia sat and watched us drink. I could see that I repulsed her. I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn’t interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored m...

Information has been received in this office indicating that you were arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department on March 12, 1969, on a drunk charge. In this connection, your atten...

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...

like the fox run with the hunted and if I’m not the happiest man on earth

Lydia phoned me in the morning. “Whenever you get drunk,” she said, “I’m going out dancing. I went to the Red Umbrella last night and I asked men to dance with me. A woman has a right t...

I think of automobiles parked in a parking lot when I think of myself dead I think of frying pans when I think of myself dead

look there. the one you considered killing you… for. you saw her the other day getting out of her car

all of a sudden I’m a painter. a girl from Galveston gives me $50 for a painting of a man holding a candycane while floating in a darkened sky.