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Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski, born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, was a German-born American author who is considered one of the most intriguing poets of his generation. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and at the age of three, he moved with his family to the United States, growing up in Los Angeles. Bukowski's writing was greatly influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambiance of his hometown, and 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.

Bukowski's career as a writer was marked by a tumultuous journey. After attending Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, he moved to New York City to become a writer. However, his lack of publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. He worked a wide range of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver, and loader, mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways.

Bukowski resumed writing in 1956, after developing a bleeding ulcer. He published his first book of poetry in 1959 and went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and prose. Some of his most notable works include Pulp (1994), Screams from the Balcony (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992). Bukowski's writing has had a significant impact on contemporary literature, and he is considered one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, as well as one of its most influential and imitated poets. He died of leukemia in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three.
Standalone Novels
# Title Year
1 Post Office 1971
2 Factotum 1975
3 Women 1978
4 Ham on Rye 1982
5 Barfly 1983
6 Hollywood 1989
7 Pulp 1994
Collections
# Title Year
1 Run With the Hunted 1962
2 It Catches My Heart in Its Hands 1963
3 Crucifix in a Deathhand 1965
4 Cold Dogs In The Courtyard 1965
5 At Terror Street And Agony Way 1968
6 The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills 1969
7 Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness 1972
8 Mockingbird Wish Me Luck 1972
9 South of No North 1973
10 Poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window 1974
11 Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame 1974
12 Love Is a Dog from Hell 1977
13 Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit 1979
14 Dangling in the Tournefortia 1981
15 The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories 1983
16 Tales of Ordinary Madness 1983
17 Hot Water Music 1983
18 War All the Time 1984
19 You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense 1986
20 The Roominghouse Madrigals 1988
21 A Bukowski Sampler 1988
22 Septuagenarian Stew 1990
23 In the Shadow of the Rose 1991
24 The Last Night of the Earth Poems 1992
25 Betting on the Muse 1996
26 Bone Palace Ballet 1997
27 What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire 1999
28 Open All Night 2000
29 The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps 2001
30 Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems Book 1 2002
31 Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems Book 2 2002
32 New Poems Book One 2003
33 New Poems Book Two 2003
34 New Poems Book Three 2003
35 New Poems Book Four 2003
36 The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain 2003
37 Come On In! 2006
38 The People Look Like Flowers At Last 2007
39 The Pleasures of the Damned 2007
40 Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook 2008
41 The Continual Condition 2009
42 Absence of the Hero 2010
43 The Most Beautiful Woman in Town 2013
44 The Bell Tolls for No One 2015
45 Storm for the Living and the Dead 2017
ChapBooks
# Title Year
1 Fire Station 1970
2 Bring Me Your Love 1983
3 There's No Business 1984
Non-Fiction Books
# Title Year
1 All the Assholes in the World and Mine 1966
2 Notes of a Dirty Old Man 1969
3 Shakespeare Never Did This 1979
4 The Bukowski/Purdy Letters 1984
5 Screams from the Balcony 1993
6 Living On Luck 1995
7 The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship 1998
8 Reach for the Sun 1999
9 Beerspit Night and Cursing 2001
10 Selected Letters Volume 1: 1958-1965 2004
11 Selected Letters Volume 2: 1965-1970 2004
12 Selected Letters Volume 3: 1971-1986 2004
13 Slouching Toward Nirvana 2005
14 Selected Letters Volume 4: 1987-1994 2005
15 More Notes of a Dirty Old Man 2011
16 On Writing 2015
17 On Cats 2015
18 On Love 2016
19 The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing 2018
20 On Drinking 2019
Mondo Books
# Title Year
1 Mondo Barbie 1993
2 Mondo Elvis 1994
3 Mondo Marilyn 1995
4 Mondo James Dean 1996
Charles Bukowski Anthologies
# Title Year
1 Mondo Barbie 1993
2 Mondo Elvis 1994
3 First Fiction: An Anthology of the First Published Stories by Famous Writers 1994
4 Mondo Marilyn 1995
5 Letters to America 1995
6 Mondo James Dean 1996
7 Writing Los Angeles 2002
8 The Portable Sixties Reader 2003