at the window I watch a man with a power mower the sounds of his doing race like flies and bees

the Mexican dancer shook her fans… me and her ass at me, I didn’t ask her to and my woman got mad and ran out of th… it began raining and you could hea…

he got knifed in broad daylight, c… holding his hands over his gut, dr… on the pavement. nobody waiting in line left their… he made it to the Mission doorway,…

old grey-haired waitresses in cafes at night have given it up, and as I walk down sidewalks of light and look into windows

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...

The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a s...

It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I ...

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…

Jack London drinking his life awa… writing of strange and heroic men. Eugene O’Neill drinking himself o… while writing his dark and poetic works.

shot off his left ear then his right, and then tore off his belt buckle with hot lead, and then

They had this thing called Training Class, and so for 30 minutes each night, anyhow, we didn’t have to stick mail. A big Italiano got up on the lecture platform to tell us where it was....

So gramps wrote Joyce a big check and there we were. We rented a little house up on a hill, and then Joyce got this stupid moralistic thing. “We both ought to get jobs,” Joyce said, “to...

if I suffer at this typewriter think how I’d feel among the lettuce— pickers of Salinas?