#AmericanWriters
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.
here I am in the ground my mouth open and
“It’s the manager, Freddy. He has started whistling this song. He’s whistling it when I come in in the morning and he never stops, and he’s whistling it when I go home at night. It’s be...
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.
he’s 17 . mother, he said, how do I crack an egg? all right, she said to me, you don… sit there looking like that.
dumb, Jesus Christ, some people are so dumb you can hear them splashing around
I took Tanya to Santa Anita. The current sensation was a 16 year old jockey still riding with his 5 pound bug advantage. He was from the east and was riding at Santa Anita for the first...
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
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.
at high noon at a small college near the beach sober the sweat running down my arms a spot of sweat on the table
Then some men came around and ripped out every other water– fountain. “Hey, look, what the hell are they doing?” I asked. I was in the 3rd class flat section. I walked over to another c...
you shoulda been at this party, I know you hate parties but you seem to be at most of them… anyhow, I took my girl, you know her—
I was the last one off the plane and there was Joanna Dover. “Joanna, let’s have a Bloody Mary while we wait for my baggage. Oh hell, I don’t have any baggage. But let’s have a Bloody M...
got into my BMW and drove down to… pick up my American Express Gold… told the girl at the desk what I wanted. you’re Mr. Chinaski,” she
I saw a vacancy sign in the window in front of a rooming-house, had the cabby pull up. I paid him and walked up on the front porch, rang the bell. I had one black eye from the fight, an...