Run with the hunted
For five decades, Charles Bukowski's writing has depicted life on the edge with an unflinchingly mordant clarity that has earned him millions of devotees all over the world. Here is the first comprehensive collection of the best of Bukowski's autobiographical stories, novels, and poems, and it brings into razorsharp focus the counterculture idol's astonishing life and work. Bukowski's crisp, gritty, highly personal writing chronicles his spectacularly extreme life, with its mingling strings of odd jobs, unusual women, inspired debauches, matter-of-fact desperation, and literary triumphs. Run with the Hunted weaves these strings together in a manner that is as appropriate for Bukowski's work as it is unusual for an anthology. It is arranged chronologically, not by its contents' original publication dates but by the period in Bukowski's life that each entry covers. As such, it transcends the realm of anthology and becomes something very like Bukowski's memoir. Beginning with his first recollection of consciousness (as a toddler under a table in 1922) and culminating with wry septuagenarian reflections, Run with the Hunted is packed with dispassionately eloquent accounts of his hard life - from brutal childhood to reluctant stardom - and crystalline observations of life at large.
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- Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader
- Run With the Hunted by poet Charles Bukowski. This ain't your grandma's poetry :)
- Run With the Hunted and Love is a Dog from Hell spring to mind, but for me half the fun of reading him is just jumping in randomly. His life was chaos so it's fitting. If you read enough about "Hank" a picture of who he was will start to materialize.
Since he's dead and not able to spend your book sales money on booze and horses, he'd probably be ok with you just reading his stuff online for free[0]. He is also great to listen to, there are a lot of recordings of his readings that you can find in the usual places. The poems are filled with a kind of beautiful carnage which contrasts the even tone of his delivery. Like, "Yeah, that crazy shit happened but so what?"
One of my favorites as a teaser to start with:
[0] http://www.poemhunter.com/charles-bukowski/poems/Rain a symphony orchestra. there is a thunderstorm, they are playing a Wagner overture and the people leave their seats under the trees and run inside to the pavilion the women giggling, the men pretending calm, wet cigarettes being thrown away, Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look, one man sits alone in the rain listening. the audience notices him. they turn and look. the orchestra goes about its business. the man sits in the night in the rain, listening. there is something wrong with him, isn't there? he came to hear the music.p.s. I can't speak for the quality of that site, you may have better luck elsewhere. When I looked up Rain all I got was the first line, so it's possible that other poems have errors.
