Charles Bukowski by Barry Miles (PDF)

Description

Fear makes me a writer, fear and a lack of confidence’Charles Bukowski chronicled the seedy underside of the city in which he spent most of his life, Los Angeles. His heroes were the panhandlers and hustlers, the drunks and the hookers, his beat the racetracks and strip joints and his inspiration a series of dead-end jobs in warehouses, offices and factories. It was in the evenings that he would put on a classical record, open a beer and begin to type…Brought up by a violent father, Bukowski suffered childhood beatings before developing horrific acne and withdrawing into a moody adolescence. Much of his young life epitomised the style of the Beat generation – riding Greyhound buses, bumming around and drinking himself into a stupor. During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office, Factotum, Women and Pulp. His novels sold millions of copies worldwide in dozens of languages.In this definitive biography Barry Miles, celebrated author of Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats, turns his attention to the exploits of this hard-drinking, belligerent wild man of literature.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Barry Miles has covered a lot of ground in his life. Someone should wrtie a book about him. But when it comes to Bukowski I am in a strange position. I corresponded with him in a minor way. (He wrote me 20 times, I wrote him about 55) I own a bookstore in San Francisco where I’ve gotten to know many people whom Bukowski knew well. Neeli Cherkovski works down the street at New College. Harold Norse lives on my block and will be turning 90 in two weeks. John Bryan is a regular fixture. Jack Micheline painted the back room. Linda King sculped the head of A.D. Winans in my store. But my point being that unless you know better it is very very difficult to know if a biographer is on target. You might get distracted by purely trivial things…you might like the writing and decide it also must be acurate. Often it is not. But look the essence is did he fairly and acurately capture the man? For me Barry Miles book is definately the best. For instance he covers Bukowsk’s bad habit of hatcheting old freinds. Like Jon Webb and John Bryan. He gets so many things so right. Yes he slips a bit now and then but I kept reading this biography and marveled at how he nailed one thing after another. Jesus he must have read 10,000 Bukowski letters carefully. Well, ok, he didn’t mention how I wrote Bukowski and convienced him to buy a MacIntosh computer. Which I did. I forgive him. But Miles has written an excellent work well worth buying.

⭐I’m a huge Bukowski fan. This is the worst biography about Bukowski that I’ve read.There were a few interesting things that were uncovered through research – histories of some of Buk’s women, for example. Unfortunately, there were far too many case where the author jumps around in time, for no good reason. He’ll be talking about Bukowski publishing a book in the 70s and then jump back and have a few sentences about 66 when Bukowski did something strange when he was drunk. C’mon! If there were good dramatic reason for it (the Godfather films, for example) I’m all for it. Here is just seems sloppy.This is an example of how the author figures out if something really happened or not (I’m paraphrasing here): “Bukowski wrote about this a few different times, so it must be at least somewhat true!” Thanks pal, I could’ve figured that one out! The author does this repeatedly and it gets tiring. Sometimes, the author tracks down someone who was actually there, but not often.I really only gave this 2 stars because it’s about BUKOWSKI, which is welcome. I could even tolerate the weird “proving” of events. But I cannot stand the jumping around, it’s distracting. Peace.

⭐I usually buy and read everything about Charles Bukowski, whom I love. I’ve read all his novels and most of his short stories. As written in dealing with Linda King’s book, I usually like things written by and about Bukowski, because they keep me in touch with him. It’s just because I learn more and more about him and his work. Now my personal adage is, ‘No book is perfect, but if I have fun I love it!’ What about this one? Yes, I did have fun and so I do love it…

⭐you probably read this book if your a buk. fan like me. altough i’d read a lot about bukowski’s life before this really connected all the dots.d

⭐A good account of Bukowskis life.

⭐A good, honest overall biography. It gives a total picture of Charles Bukowski. Barry Miles is on of the best biographers. I have read a number of books by and about Bukowski.

⭐I was bored a long way from the finish. This book is on par with the Sounes biography and about the same quality with similar anecdotes and material. The one thing that Miles did better than most was not let Bukowski off the hook for his outrageous lies or stretching the truth at best. Also Bukowski’s treatment of some of his friends was appalling especially people that helped him early in his career. He used people up and often wrote about them. Bukowski the man was not very likeable but he was sometimes a great writer especially in the first half of his career. Apart from the odd collection his later writing did not have the same impact as earlier works as he had had said it all before and said it better. The subjects for his stories and poems never varied much and there was too much filler in most of his later books. The fictional Chinaski was a much better person than Bukowski was. Too often the real one was a drunk bore and also manipulative. In Bukowski’s case the fiction was much more interesting than the truth and more entertaining. The irony is that many of the fans thought he was Chinaski in real life.

⭐Concise, clear, I would say this is a first book for anyone interested in the great poet.Having read many of Bukowski’s work recently I can attest to the veracity of the biography;not only following the life closely, but fitting, by the author’s assimilation of the Bukowski style.

⭐Barry Miles is truly a brilliant biographer, having read his William Burroughs biography I just had to buy this. It is no where near as extensive as the W B book but that I believe is due to the fact that Bukowski’s life was in no way as intricate and jam packed, having spent all of it in L.A unlike the globe trotting Burroughs. This doesn’t mean all the little nuances are missed out and Bukowski comes across as a pretty dislikeable individual, amusing but volatile an almost hedonistic misanthrope. He’s a misogynist who’s favoured description for women is simply whore, and he appears to be a terrible friend, being rather ungrateful just hateful and publicly revealing private confidences and discrediting people who helped him in a very descriptively hateful way. One should probably expect no less from a recidivistic drunk, but I honestly held Hank in higher esteem before reading this book, and I came away with the opinion that Bukowski was actually a very unpleasant, selfish individual, an intricate , complicated man who lived the self destructive life of an addict, but a failure at being human.

⭐Much of it us borrowed from Ham on Rye but still interesting

⭐the author doesn’t seem to like the subject very muchhonestly done, but with zero affection

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