Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.
On Writing
The never-before-published letters of Charles Bukowski on the art of writing
“This is more important than Hitler, this is about my book. It won't shake the world, it won't kill a soul, it won't fire a gun, ah, but you'll remember the book. The story of Vera Rivken, a slice out of life”
“Today it’s widely regarded as a classic of American literature. But Fante’s masterpiece has not always enjoyed such prominence. In fact, its journey to its current status has been long and highly unusual…”
Rob Woodard
Guardian
“having been born into this strange life we must accept the wasted gamble of our days and take some satisfaction in the pleasure of leaving it all behind”
“If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever”
