The FBI has admitted to keeping files on working-class poet and middle-aged postal worker Charles Bukowski, because he wrote half-fiction columns for the Los Angeles underground newspaper Open City. The Bureau was particularly fascinated by the story of a drunken lady who liberated $5,000 worth of pet birds.
Charles Bukowski: not a fan! After reading the abominable Women—in which our protagonist kills time in his apartment while waiting for dozens of the silly crazy girls who write him letters to get off the plane and fuck him—I gave it to my (ex) boyfriend: "You'll love this." (He did.) Nothing wrong with earnestly-expressed chauvinism in literature. However, his limply pathetic meanderings allow the more discerning readers to assume that even though Bukowski was prolific with his women and his writing, he was—ultimately—a pretty bad lay.If you hate yourself and are in the mood for his sloppy seconds, however, Bukowski's got a new thing of b-sides coming out, called Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook. At least the L.A. Times half-way agrees with our assessment: "When I was young, and new to L.A., and hanging around dissolute poets, I read a lot of Bukowski, and it seemed to me, even then, that there was a lot of dreck to page through before something struck and resonated." It's been real, Charles. Now get out of my apartment.
The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote next week on whether or not to preserve the bungalow where the hard-living and harder-drinking poet and author Charles Bukowski wrote his first novel. The city's Cultural Heritage Commission is attempting to designate the nearly 90-year-old property as a historic monument, which would effectively rescue it from certain destruction at the hands real estate developers who are just itching to put up some condos in its place. Wonder if someday someone will do the same for the apartment off The Strip that the members of Mötley Crüe once lived in? Somehow, we doubt it. [Reuters]
