What is your favourite Charles Bukowski book ?

Question

I like Post Office, obvious I know but there you have it.

Answer 1

My favorite Bukowski book is "Ham on Rye." It's an autobiographical story of when he was 12. It's sort of like a basketball diaries type of read.

My favorite bukowski poem is "dreamlessly".

old grey-haired waitresses
in cafes at night
have given it up,
and as I walk down sidewalks of
light and look into windows
of nursing homes
I can see that it is no longer
with them.
I see people sitting on park benches
and I can see by the way they
sit and look
that it is gone.

I see people driving cars
and I see by the way
they drive their cars
that they neither love nor are
loved -
nor do they consider
sex. it is all forgotten
like an old movie.

I see people in department stores and
supermarkets
walking down aisles
buying things
and I can see by the way their clothing
fits them and by the way they walk
and by their faces and their eyes
that they care for nothing
and that nothing cares
for them.

I can see a hundred people a day
who have given up
entirely.

if I go to the racetrack
or a sporting event
I can see thousands
that feel for nothing or
no one
and get no feeling
back.

everywhere I see those who
crave nothing but
food, shelter, and
clothing; they concentrate
on that,
dreamlessly.

I do not understand why theyse people do not
vanish
I do not understand why these people do not
expire
why the clouds
do not murder them
or why the dogs
do not murder them
or why the flowers and the children
do not murder them,
I do not understand.

I suppose they are murdered
yet I can't adjust to the
fact of them
because they are so
many.

each day,
each night,
there are more of them
in the subways and
in the buildings and
in the parks

they feel no terror
at not loving
or at not
being loved
so many many many
of my fellow
creatures.

Answer 2

Yeah gotta be post office. I have an audio CD that I found second hand some years ago. Still got it somewhere and that was pretty cool too, him in full gig mode. Have a book of his poetry too and thats pretty awsome

Answer 3

Never read him, but I know he didn't call himself a thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper, or a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage. He sounds a little too depressing for me.

Answer 4

Novel: Ham on RYe

Short stories: NOtes of A dirty old man

Poems: too many to choose

Title: All the Assholes in the World and mine.