To make matters worse, his father wants him to climb up the social ladder and sends him to a private school where he sticks out like a sore thumb. Living at the violent hands of an abusive father, unprotected by a mother who does nothing to stop the beatings as she herself is a victim of them, Henry Chinaski has the misfortune of becoming a man in the city of Los Angeles when it has been transformed by the Great Depression. Henry is Charles’ alter ego, and most of his miserable and happy moments are based on the author’s own childhood. In this best Charles Bukowski book, which is a thinly veiled autobiography, the reader is guided through the hardest years a human being can suffer through – those dreaded teenage years – from the perspective of Henry Chinaski. Charles Bukowski died of leukemia in 1994, at the age of 74. He remained faithful to the small publishers that had given him a chance when no one would, though, and continued to publish his works in less known magazines. Shortly after accepting the offer, he had finished writing Post Office. It was in 1969 when he quit his job at the post-office and started to write full time for Black Sparrow Press after an offer the publishing house made that his fate started to change. Careerįor most of his life, until he was middle-aged, fame eluded him and he was an underdog in the literary world, his poems not being most people’s cup of tea (or pint of beer). In general terms, his work describes the drudgery of poor, ordinary Americans’ daily lives and issues, and many of the topics that are common in his world: problems with alcoholism, lack of satisfaction with dreary, menial, dead-end jobs, and unhealthy relationships to sex and women. Writing is my way of making other chances.Bukowski is best known for his descriptions of struggling lower class “low-lives”. I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” -Stephen Greenblatt “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” -F. “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” -John Edgar Wideman “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” -Denise Levertov “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” -E.L. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” -E.L. “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. “Let’s face it, writing is hell.” -William Styron “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” -Thomas Mann “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” -Paul Rudnick Writing is not only useless, it’s spoiled paper.” -Padget Powell “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you’re doing the whole time.” -Shelby Foote You can’t stop it.” -William Carlos Williams One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.” -Iris Murdoch “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” -Pico Iyer “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” -Pico Iyer “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” -Anthony Powell “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” -Michael Cunningham Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” -Joy Williams “Writers end up writing stories-or rather, stories’ shadows-and they’re grateful if they can, but it is not enough.
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