Charles Bukowski

Legacy: the Artists Behind the Legends

Henry Charles Bukowski, born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, was a German-American novelist, short story writer, and poet active during the mid to late 20th century. Holy shit, where do I even begin with this guy…well, to start, his writing was deeply influenced by his own life, and many of his works were relatively autobiographical, centering on the social, cultural, and economic environment of Los Angeles, where he lived for the majority of his life. To give you some perspective here, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, altogether publishing over sixty books. The themes of his work reflect his own experience with writing, with working total crap jobs, bad relationships with women, and as you could probably guess, alcohol. And believe me when I also tell you that the FBI kept an open file on Charles for decades after WWII AND as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man, which ran in an underground LA newspaper called Open City. This week will be a tad different than usual everyone, and that is due to the fact that so much of Bukowski’s work is based on his own life, and otherwise, details on him are relatively limited. This means we will dive into a series of excerpts from two of his more famous novels, and determine ourselves just who the man Time magazine pegged “a laureate of American lowlife” really was. Grab the drink of the week– you’re gonna need it, and let’s get episode two of season two started with none other than Charles Bukowski.