A little bit less gay bar action would have been nice for me personally but I don’t think anyone delicate or easily offended would read Bukowski past his introduction. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. Whether he is drinking while writing his stories and poetry, or showing up to work and meetings already drunk, every story incorporates his vigorous drinking habits.

See him as he walks through a park absorbing images and smells, pausing every once in a while to take a closer look at whatever catches his attention. Alcohol, homelessness, bouncing around various places to live and taking menial jobs, abusive relationships that went both ways, these are the real life parts. For instance his shirt cardboard reflections, 'if you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence', in other societies and circles, the test of friendship would not be so extreme, but in Bukowski's world, a jail sentence would suffice as best a test of friendship as you can get. This book has reconfirmed for me the fact that Bukowski is best at this form of writing - short stories.

We all know that type of old man, a blunt and sarcastic one who have seen it all and tired of all the bullshit. After a few tens of pages it settles down into a more, well mostly, stable narrative; almost like Bukowski wanted to put off the reader from delving further into the book. It is life uncluttered by the niceties and civilities of the numbed life most of us, under the confines of comfy blankets, PC's, cell phones, the latest fashions, million channel TV, etc.

Because when I finally, after three days, managed to turn the last page of this 200 page book, I just didn't care. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. the reason the average person is at the track is that they are driven screwy by the turn of the bolt, the foreman’s insane face, the landlord’s hand, the lover’s dead sex; taxation, cancer, the blues; clothes that fall apart on a 3rd wearing, water that tastes like piss, doctors that run assembly-line and indecent offices, hospitals without heart, politicians with skulls filled with pus … we can go on and on but would only be accused of being bitter and demented, but the world makes madmen (and women) of us all, and even the saints are demented, nothing is saved. As much as these little stories are impossible to forget, however, it is Bukowski's wry observations on life that really shine through, such as 'The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion.This could all be bluffing, but if not, then Bukowski has raped and beaten a good few souls in this world. Without taking his eyes from that nonexistent spot straight ahead, he reaches into the inside pocket of his coat and takes out a small object. Notes of a Dirty Old Man" was also syndicated (starting with its move to NOLA Express in, 1969) though United Press Syndicate, which meant that any underground paper that was a UPS member could print the columns. I don't know what difficult thing Bukowski was trying to say but I can't argue that it was told in a very simple way.

As I’ve grown older, I still feel that affection, but I am also more cognizant of the moral failings that I once excused and overlooked. The Auditory-Visual Integration of Anger is impaired in Alcoholism: an Event-Related Potentials Study". He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).At times, you could even say this read is entertaining, but what it is all the time, is disturbingly honest, ugly – real. At times, I found the collection sophomoric, as though he were daring me to read on, and read on I did. Like South of No North, this book has its ups and downs, although I like Notes of a Dirty Old Man slightly better for several reasons. But one line from chapter 12 haunts me the most, until chapter 42 and even after I finished the book. At one point, someone says to a Bukowski self-insert character, "It doesn't matter whether your stories are true," to which Bukowski replies "They are.

It begins during his early childhood by explaining the difficult relationship that he had with his father. I actually started listening to this book on audio because Will Patton’s voice is everything, but without actual chapter breaks it was too hard to follow. Even if it is all an act, all of the autobiographical shit, Bukowski still has the narrative perspective of a person who refused to be groomed by his parents, teachers, or lovers. It is a life I myself experienced for twenty five years, and at times it is still a preferable life to me than the desensitizing one I may live today. He’s more of a rock-and-roll type of person that has surrendered to his vices and even has that hint of proudness of his shortcomings.And after all, an intellectual takes something simple and makes it complex, while an artist takes something complex and makes it simple.