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Charles Bukowski Message Board 1/1/2012
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Bukowski has written!

Author Bukowski's Book Reviews

Factotum
Henry Chinaski wanders from job to woman to job to woman in this tale of an alcoholic, usually unemployed writer. Henry Chinaski wanders into New Orleans hoping that the new city will help his state of mind. It doesn't, and the aberrant writer spends his time looking for and abruptly quitting jobs, then drinking and drinking and drinking. He leaves New Orleans for his parents' house in Los Angeles, but puts himself out of a room there because of his drin...
Ham on Rye
Charles Bukowski tells us of the coming of age of Henry Chinaski in this thinly veiled autobiography. Seen through the eyes of this angry teen, we hear about his difficult relationship with his parents. His abusive father would beat him with his razor if the lawn wasn't maintained to perfection. Henry also had the worst case of acne that his doctors had ever seen. Experimentally, the doctors would puncture each pimple or have him sit under ultra- vio...
Hollywood
Henry Chinaski is a drunk writer whose stories about his down-and-out life in Los Angeles' dive bars have attracted the attention of several Hollywood producers who want to make a movie about him. Chinaski writes a screenplay about his alcoholic younger self, and the days when all he did was sit around in bars, get wasted, chase women, and get into fights. He hooks up with a pair of producers, Friedman and Fischman. He also finds a director, Jon Pinch...
Post Office
Henry Chinaski is a loner who only wants to drink and be with women. He decides to get a job at the post office because, as he says, they'll hire anybody and the work seems easy. The book follows Chinaski through his experiences in the Post Office, at the race track, and with women. It is written in a simple and direct style. The post office is society, with its rules of conduct and order. Full of insight and depth, this book isn't afraid of being brutal...

Bukowski booklist

Women
This is probably thinly-disguised autobiography, as much of Bukowski's prose may be. A (non-)spiritual literary descendant of Henry Miller, Bukowski wrote and screwed his way through the world, but redeemed himself to the extent that he never kidded himself or others. He never pretended to be anything he wasn't, and he wrote fine, honest -- if often vulgar -- prose. Something of an acquired taste, his view from the gutter has a refreshing honesty about i...
You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense
This story is about a man who live his life trying to survive and the experiences that he has while feeling completely insane and full of uninterpretable feelings. You Get So Alone is about the life of a man in his mid twenties. Suffering from being a partial alcoholic the main character is often conflicted about his emotions and suffers from being an introvert with many friends that he doesn't keep for long periods of times. His lovers tend to get into ...