About the Author

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 Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, 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 (1994).

Reviews

These letters cover the final years of Bukowski's life, a bittersweet period that brought fame and prosperity along with tuberculosis and leukemia. Bukowski's correspondents, mostly publishers, editors, and fellow poets, include John Martin, William Packard, and Gerald Locklin. His letters to them rant against his critics, praise early influences like C‚line and John Fante, and harp on his favorite subjects: wine, women, and the racetrack. Above all, however, they reveal a man dedicated to his craft. Bukowski lived to write, and he is quick to express his gratitude for the "three miracles in [his] life: Loujon Press, The Black Sparrow Press, and The New York Quarterly"Äoutlets for his work that helped transform Bukowski from a barfly to an internationally celebrated author. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.ÄWilliam Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.