Pulp

by Charles Bukowski

Overview

Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Charles Bukowski's own brand of humor and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles. 

Bukowski’s final novel is a surreal pastiche of the classic Mickey Spillane, Chandleresque private dick novel. Nick Belane, is a lonely, middle-aged, egotistical, alcoholic private detective who is badly in need of some lucrative work, but what he gets is a series of increasingly strange assignments from a bizarre collection of clients.

He is asked to track down the long-dead French classical author Celine and an elusive red sparrow. He encounters aliens, heavies and even Lady Death herself. All the while, Belane is convincing himself that he’s still a white-hot detective and that nobody can take him for a ride, or indeed make him feel he’s losing his mind.

Pulp is essential fiction from Buk himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780876859261
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/31/2002
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.

Date of Birth:

August 16, 1920

Date of Death:

March 9, 1994

Place of Birth:

Andernach, Germany

Place of Death:

San Pedro, California

Education:

Los Angeles City College, 2 years

Read an Excerpt

Pulp

Chapter One

I was sitting in my office, my lease had expired and McKelvey was starting eviction proceedings. It was a hellish hot day and the air conditioner was broken. A fly crawled across the top of my desk. I reached out with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game. I wiped my hand on my right pants leg as the phone rang.

I picked it up. "Ah yes," I said.

"Do you read Celine?" a female voice asked. Her voice sounded quite sexy. I had been lonely for some time. Decades.

"Celine," I said, "ummm".

"I want Celine," she said. "I've got to have him."

Such a sexy voice, it was getting to me, really.

"Celine?" I said. "Give me a little background. Talk to me, lady. Keep talking .

"Zip up," she said.

I looked down.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Never mind. I want Celine."

"Celine is dead."

"He isn't. I want you to find him. I want him."

"I might find his bones."

"No, you fool, he's alive!"

"Where'?"

"Hollywood. I hear he's been hanging around Red Koldowsky's bookstore."

"Then why don't you find him?"

"Because first I want to know if he's the real Celine. I'; have to be sure, quite sure. "

"But why did you come to me? There are a hundred dicks in this town."

"John Barton recommended you."

"Oh, Barton, yeah. Well, listen, I'll have to have some kind of advance. And I'll have to see you personally."

"I'll be there in a few minutes," she said.

She hung up. I zipped up.

And waited.

Pulp. Copyright © byCharles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

The late poet, novelist, and (spare the expression) man of letters, Charles Bukowski, is said to have left many books-worth of material in the can (so to speak), but this characteristically gritty piece of Bukowskiana is no patchwork, and was complete and in production at the time of his death. All of Bukowski will one day be essential to every collection--and never cheaper than now. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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