Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters, 1960-1970

by Charles Bukowski

Overview

Screams from the Balcony is a collection of letters chronicling Charles Bukowski's life as he tries to get published and work at a postal office, all while drinking and gambling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061872983
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/17/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	3 MB

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

Editorial Reviews

The quotidian plaints of the ever put-upon poet. Requiescat in pace. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Here we witness the angry, boozing, brooding, bitter poet, still unable to quit his day job, hustling his work. But he also appears inspired and hard-edged, drawing strength from his raw self-expression, his uncompromising stance as the ultimate outsider, his relentless rage, and his ability to survive in spite of himself. These letters from 1960 through 1970 reveal Bukowski in his glory--toothaches, hangovers, hemorrhoids, and all--as a manic-depressive for all seasons. His persona, so closely linked to his pathology, is as apparent in his correspondence as in his poetry and fiction, making these selected letters ideal for Bukowskiphiles. One wonders, however, just how many others will delve into this stuff. Bukowski is perversely intriguing, attracting the kind of attention one usually reserves for grisly train wrecks. Stay tuned--this is only the first volume.

Benjamin Segedin