Bukowski, A Life

What’s the future for Bukowski? He’s found in some of the standard anthologies now, and there are a handful of teachers and professors in the academic world who teach his work, treating him as a serious writer.

Hank died on Wednesday, March 9, 1994, at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital from leukemia, Linda and Marina at his bedside.

Although sixty-eight years old, he was as determined as ever to maintain his old routine

bride he raised his glass and said, “To my wife, who is searching for something she will never find, the truth.”

The morning afterward

You know what I’m going to do?” Schroeder replied. “I’ll burn your house down.”

He had been a clown of sorts in his drinking days

He had never read prose like this before, nor such hard-hitting, honest dialogue. Schroeder found something unique in Bukowski, especially in the poetry, when he saw that it had little to do with the Beat aesthetic, Henry Miller, or other “outsider” movements in literature.

It was like grammar school all over again. Gathered around me were the weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life. That didn’t bother me so much as the fact that I seemed irresistible to these dull idiot fellows

There is no hint of misogyny, just a portrait of a man trying to save himself, for himself.

He wants you to say exactly what it is, and if you can do something that makes the writing clearer and better, he will leave it, but usually, the way he does it is the best way.”