" I don ' t hate people... I just feel better when they ' re not around." When I was a college student, I had the habit of checking my friends bookcases to see what they were reading. I ' d see books by Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Herman Hesse. Looking on a lower shelf, tucked away in a corner perhaps, I ' d often see multiple well-worn titles by Charles Bukowski.
The message was clear: high-brow reading was necessary but Bukowski was pure fun. Charles Bukowski was a poet of the profane. A student of the gritty streets, he wrote about the shadow side of America. Prostitutes, dingy bars, human cruelty, lonely trysts. He was a brutal drunk, a misogynist, a selfadmitted louse. But he was also a prolific writer and at times a sensitive poet with a twisted sense of humor. His old De Longpre Avenue Apartment in Hollywood is now an official landmark. His headstone features a graphic of a boxer and the zen-inspired epitaph " Don ' t try."( 5 " x 6, black ink print)
" I don ' t hate people... I just feel better when they ' re not around." When I was a college student, I had the habit of checking my friends bookcases to see what they were reading. I ' d see books by Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Herman Hesse. Looking on a lower shelf, tucked away in a corner perhaps, I ' d often see multiple well-worn titles by Charles Bukowski.
The message was clear: high-brow reading was necessary but Bukowski was pure fun. Charles Bukowski was a poet of the profane. A student of the gritty streets, he wrote about the shadow side of America. Prostitutes, dingy bars, human cruelty, lonely trysts. He was a brutal drunk, a misogynist, a selfadmitted louse. But he was also a prolific writer and at times a sensitive poet with a twisted sense of humor. His old De Longpre Avenue Apartment in Hollywood is now an official landmark. His headstone features a graphic of a boxer and the zen-inspired epitaph " Don ' t try."( 5 " x 6, black ink print)