Bobby’s wife worked two nights a week and when she was gone he got on the telephone. I knew that on Tuesday and Thursday nights he would be lonely. It was Tuesday night when the phone r...

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...

she’s young, she said, but look at me, I have pretty ankles, and look at my wrists, I have pret… wrists

I go to pick her up. she’s on some errand. she always has errands many things to do. I have nothing to do.

near the corner table in the cafe middle-aged couple sit. they have finished their

a symphony orchestra. there is a thunderstorm, they are playing a Wagner overture and the people leave their seats u… and run inside to the pavilion

it’s strange when famous people di… whether they have fought the good… the bad one. it’s strange when famous people di… whether we like them or not

well, first Mae West died and then George Raft, and Eddie G. Robinson’s been gone long time,

Bobby and Valerie came by and I introduced everybody around. “Valerie and I are going to take a vacation and rent rooms by the seashore in Manhattan Beach,” said Bobby. “Why don’t you g...

once we were young at this machine. . . drinking

you no faces no faces at all laughing at nothing—

I paid this one’s fare all the way… to San Francisco then flew up to meet her at her br… and I got drunk and talked all night about a redhe…

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

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