Works by
Charles Bukowski
(Aka Heinrich Karl Bukowski)
(Poet)
[August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994]

Audio

• The Life and Hazardous Times of Charles Bukowski (2000)
  Though an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, Charles Bukowski wrote some of the most insightful prose and poetry of this century and had the gift to reveal a difficult life with alarming candor. This recording profiles the man whom Jean-Paul Sartre described as `Americas greatest poet`. This biography is interspersed with recordings he made during his life, discussing his work, his gambling, his drinking and, of course, his women.

Fiction

• Pulp (1995)
  Bukowski's final novel is a slightly 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 along the way. 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. Boozing heavily and trying to avoid getting beaten up in every bar along the way, he finally reaches the conclusion that he's washed up. Bukowski's deliberately overdone writing takes us on a fantastical ride through the dark corners and dodgy dealings of Belane's film-noir world with guns, broads and heavyset thugs. A great demonstration of Bukowski's imaginative talents.

• Hollywood (1989)
  Hank and his wife, Sarah, agree to write a screenplay, and encounter the strange world of the movie industry.

• Ham on Rye: A Novel (1982)
  In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

• Women: A Novel (1978)
  Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.
  
  With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge.

• Factotum (1975)
  One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.
  
  Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.

• Post Office: A Novel (1971)
  "It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers. This classic 1971 novel—the one that catapulted its author to national fame—is the perfect introduction to the grimly hysterical world of legendary writer, poet, and Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski and his fictional alter ego, Chinaski.

Letters
The 1960's saw Charles Bukowski struggle for recognition and slowly emerge as a unique, talented and prolific poet and writer, whilst holding down a day job at the Post Office. These letters to various friends, lovers and literary contacts provide an intimate and fascinating look at Bukowski's mind, his emotions, his attitude towards his own creativity and the comings and goings of his daily life.

1. Selected Letters: 1958-1965 (2004)

2. Selected Letters: 1965-1970 (2004)

3. Selected Letters Volume 3: 1971-1986 (2004)

4. Selected Letters: 1987-1994 (2005)

• Screams from the Balcony  (1993)

• The Bukowski/Purdy Letters: A Decade of Dialogue, 1964-1974  (1983)

Movies

• Charles Bukowski - The Last Straw (2008)
  Jon Monday, director
  DVD

• Charles Bukowski - There's Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here (2008)
  Jon Monday, director
  DVD

• Bukowski - Born Into This (2002)
  John Dullaghan, director with Bono
  DVD

• Barfly (1987)
  Barbet Schroeder, director with Faye Dunaway and Mickey Rourke
  Screenplay (1987)
  DVD  VHS

• Barweed (1987)
  DVD
  Charles Bukowski hits the streets of Albany, New York with a mythical hobo named Francis in this 11 minute short.
  They drink and smoke, visit a graveyard, go to a cartoon museum and generally have some clean ol' fun before passing out in a pool of vomit and great intentions!
  
  Barweed was made in one day for seven dollars (in 1987) and has been lovingly remastered for this special DVD release.
  
  If any of these keywords strike your fancy this film might just tickle you pink!

  • Bukowski

  • Ironweed

  • Barfly

  • Iron Butterfly

  • William Kennedy

  • Albany

  • Shockumentary

• The Charles Bukowski Tapes (1985)
  Barbet Shroeder, director
  DVD  VHS

• Poetry in Motion (1982)
  Ron Mann, director with Helen Adam and Miguel Algarín
  DVD  VHS

• Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981)
  Marco Ferreri, director with Ben Gazzara and Ornella Muti
  DVD  VHS

• Bukowski at Bellevue (1970)
  DVD VHS

Non-fiction

• Beerspit Night and Cursing  (2001)
  "Isn't it odd, so very odd, that one of the loves of my idol should be writing me now? Perhaps life so works in stronger currents than we think", Charles Bukowski wrote in 1960 to Sheri Martinelli, Ezra Pound's former lover and sometime muse of the later Cantos. Martinelli had just rejected poems Bukowski had submitted to her Poundian literary magazine, the Anagogic & Paideumic Review, advising him to remain sober, pay the rent, brush his teeth, and above all, like her revered Master, consult the classics. At the time the 40-year-old Buk was still a relative unknown; he'd been "writing poetry for 5 years", as he told his outspoken new correspondent, "before that: 10 year drunk". He soon realized he'd met his match. Two years his senior, Martinelli had also been around the block. A self-styled "Street Princess", in Greenwich Village she'd been a Vogue model, painter, friend of Charlie Parker, protege of Anais Nin; in San Francisco a notable literary diva, dubbed "Queen of the Beats". For the next seven years, these two strong personalities engaged in long-distance intellectual sparring and soul-baring confession. Martinelli sends cookies, health food recipes, astrological and editorial advice; complains of her current love problems; tells this man she's never met about her life-changing May/December affair with Pound: "he read me Dante, Villon, Guido, Kuan Tzu, the Sacred Edicts, Ovid...& seduced me whilst he read...sweet Gramps". Bukowski in turn argues with his "Sister in the Dust" about those he regards as literary impostors (Kerouac, Ginsberg), championing instead "poets of pure aspect" (Pound, Jeffers); reveals his trials along life's hard road, including incarceration for publicdrunkenness and periods of toil in a slaughterhouse and a dog biscuit factory; confesses his difficulties with the opposite sex ("women cannot stand me for long, perhaps it is that I am selfish, I will not submit my soul wholly, I save a secret piece for myself"). An engagement this intense was bound to cool. "Darling, we would never get along", Buk eventually acknowledges. "We are 2 bullheads". But while it lasts, this correspondence takes us for an unforgettable wild ride.

• The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship  (1998) with Robert Crumb, Illustrator
  A book length collaboration between two underground legends, Charles Bukowski and Robert Crumb. Bukowski's last journals candidly and humorously reveal the events in the writer's life as death draws inexorably nearer, thereby illuminating our own lives and natures, and to give new meaning to what was once only familiar. Crumb has illustrated the text with 12 full-page drawings and a portrait of Bukowski.

• Shakespeare Never Did This (1980)

• Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)
  "People come to my door-too many of them really-and knock to tell me Notes of a Dirty Old Man turns them on. A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk. . . drink half the night. A long distance operator from Newburgh, N.Y. sends me money. She wants me to give up drinking beer and to eat well. I hear from a madman who calls himself 'King Arthur' and lives on Vine Street in Hollywood and wants to help me write my column. A doctor comes to my door: 'I read your column and think I can help you. I used to be a psychiatrist.' I send him away ..."

Poetry

• Come On In!  (2007)

• The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems (2007)

• The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 (2007)
  To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose truth has struck a chord with generations of readers.
  
  Edited by John Martin, the legendary publisher of Black Sparrow Press and a close friend of Bukowski's, The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works from Bukowski's long poetic career, including the last of his never-before-collected poems. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extra-ordinary and surprising sensibility, and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a rich lifetime of experiences and speak to Bukowski's "immense intelligence, the caring heart that saw through the sham of our pretenses and had pity on our human condition" (The New York Quarterly). The Pleasures of the Damned is an astonishing poetic treasure trove, essential reading for both longtime fans and those just discovering this unique and legendary American voice.

• Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems (2006)

• The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004)
  The second of five new books of unpublished poems from the late, great, Charles Bukowski, America's most imitated and influential poet –– 143 never–before–seen works of gritty, amusing, and inspiring verse.

• New Poems: Bk. 1 (2003)

• sifting through THE MADNESS for the WORD, the line, THE WAY (2003)

• Bring Me Your Love (1983, 1998 [limited run], 2002) with Robert Crumb, Illustrator

• The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps (2001)
  Charles Bukowski is one of America's best selling, best loved and most widely read poets. This new book of previously unpublished poems demonstrates that Bukowski never lost his gritty power, his ability to amuse, enlighten and inspire.

• Open All Night: New Poems (2000)
  "A testament to a fierce inverted work ethic, a belief in self-help through unending self-attention, a refusal to waste even the smallest table scrap of world or time": that same tenacity and commitment to his art which New York Times critic Jennifer Schuessler found in the Bukowski collection What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (Black Sparrow, 1999) can again be seen in the legendary bard's latest posthumous verse compilation. Several books after his demise, Buk still hasn't lost his revenant power. Think Villon as Lazarus, Celine popping out of the flames, Fante revivified. Written from the early 1980s up to the time of his death in 1994, these 189 recovered poems suggest that even his heaviest adversary, encroaching mortality, never made Bukowski flinch. The courage is undaunted, even if there's a strong hint of rue mixed into these deadpan nightcap comedies.

• Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1998)
  Like a great heavyweight in the ring with that final indomitable adversary, Bukowski went down swinging. The 175 posthumously published new poems of Bone Palace Ballet once again prove his mettle, showing the banged-up old champ still on his feet and gamely slugging it out with the inevitable: "after this long fight / I have no intention of / quitting short. / or late. / or satisfied". The life-narrative skills that made Bukowski the finest verse storyteller of his time are still alive and kicking in these verse tales, vivid fragments shored against time's ruin. The dance of death in Bukowski's bone palace takes shape as autobiography: yarns about his Depression childhood and early literary passions (from lusting after his high school English teacher to covertly devouring forbidden' books), his apprentice days as a hard-drinking, starving poetic aspirant ("working on the last bottle of /wine, /the sheets of your / writing strewn across the / floor. / you have walked on and across / them, / your masterpieces, /and/either/they'll be read in /hell, /or perhaps / gnawed at by the/curious/mice"), and finally the bittersweet later years, when, having been rendered by history "just / another old fart in a world of old farts", he nonetheless remains able to look back over his shoulder at Fate with a measure of undefeatable defiance.

• Betting on the Muse  (1996)

• The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
  Poems deal with writing, death and immortality, literature, city life, illness, war, and the past.

• The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 (1988)

• War All the Time (1984)

• Love is a Dog From Hell  (1977)

• Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames  (1974)

• The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills  Over the Hills (1969)

• Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an Eight Story Window. (1968)

• Crucifix in a Deathhand New Poems, 1963-1965  (1965)

• It Catches My Heart in Its Hands: New and Selected Poems 1955-1963 (1963)

Short Stories

• Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 (2008)
  Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is a substantial selection of these wide-ranging works, most of which have been unavailable since their original appearance in underground newspapers, literary journals, and even porn magazines. Among the highlights are Bukowski's first published short story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip"; his last short story, "The Other"; his first and last essays; and the first installment of his famous "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" column.
  
  The book contains meditations on his familiar themes (drinking, horse-racing, etc.) as well as singular discussions of such figures as Artaud, Ezra Pound, and the Rolling Stones. Other significant works include the experimental title piece; a fictionalized account of meeting his hero, John Fante ("I Meet the Master"); an unflinching review of Ernest Hemingway ("An Old Drunk Who Ran Out of Luck"); the intense, autobiographical "Dirty Old Man Confesses"; and several discussions of his aesthetics ("A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack [Tall]," "In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die," and "Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way"). What is ultimately revealed is an unexpectedly learned mind behind his seemingly off hand productions.

  Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is essential reading for Bukowski fans, as well as a good introduction for new readers of this innovative, unconventional writer.

• There's No Business (2002) with Robert Crumb, Illustrator

• What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999)
  Charles Bukowski's gamble in art was as prolific as it was audacious. The second in Black Sparrow's series of posthumous volumes of Bukowski's poetry takes us deeper into the raw, wild vein that extends from the early 1970s to the 1990s. As in Bone Palace Ballet (1997), Buk here observes the world with an "unadorned self-awareness" (Publishers Weekly) that makes each poem "a little nugget of roughneck-intellectual autobiography or attitude" (Booklist). The courage, candor, humor and human understanding of Bukowski's poetry commingle to create a kind of intuitive contact and gut wisdom not found in Western verse since Francois Villon. it's a farce, the great actors, the great poets, the great statesmen, the great painters, the great composers, the great loves, it's a farce, a farce, a farce, history and the recording of it, forget it, forget it. you must begin all over again. throw all that out. all of them out you are alone with now. look at your fingernails. touch your nose. begin. the day flings itself upon you.

• Septuagenarian Stew  (1990)

• You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)

• Hot Water Music (1983)

• Tales of Ordinary Madness (1983)
  With Bukowski, the votes are still coming in. There seems to be no middle ground-people seem either to love him or hate him. Tales of his own life and doings are as wild and weird as the very stories he writes. In a sense, Bukowski was a legend in his time . . . a madman, a recluse, a lover . . . tender, vicious . . . never the same . . . these are exceptional stories that come pounding out of his violent and depraved life . . . horrible and holy, you cannot read them and ever come away the same again.

• The Most Beautiful Woman in Town (1983)
  These mad immortal stories, now surfaced from the literary underground, have addicted legions of American readers, even though the high literary establishment continues to ignore them. In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest living realist writers.

• Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)

• Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1980)

• Play the Piano Drunk (1979)

• South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life (1973)

• Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness  (1972)

• Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)

• A Charles Bukowski Sampler (1969)

• At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968)
  See also 2-CD set Spoken Word.

• The Genius of the Crowd  (1966)

• Cold Dogs in the Courtyard  (1965)

• Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts: Fragments From a Disorder (1965)

• Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader  (1962)
  The best of Bukowski's novels, stories, and poems, this collection reads like an autobiography, relating the extraordinary story of his life and offering a sometimes harrowing, invariably exhilarating reading experience. A must for this counterculture idol's legion of fans.

Other

• Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993 (2003), David Stephen Calonne. ed.
  Thirty-four interviews and encounters chronicle the rise of Charles Bukowski. He speaks in his own voice about his writing and his life, dutifully answering question after question. Included is his first interview in 1963 with the Literary Times of Chicago from his one-bedroom Hollywood apartment, and his last—at poolside in San Pedro answering a German journalist in August 1993, seven months before his death at 73. Follow his journey from obscurity to fame in Europe and finally in America after the success of the movie Barfly.

• All's Normal Here: A Charles Bukowski Primer (1985) by Loss Pequeno Glazier

See also:

• Marguerite Duras And Charles Bukowski: The Yin And Yang Of Modern Erotic Literature (2007) by Scott Shaw
  Marguerite Duras and Charles Bukowski were each dramatically shaped by their early life experiences, established in the environment of a dysfunctional family. From their early negative exposure and emotional indoctrination to life, Duras and Bukowski each developed as individuals who, at a young age, acted out behavior that was in direct conflict with the commonly accepted standard of their individual societal norms. From the moment these authors made the adolescent choices that they did, the rest of their physical and emotional existence was ultimately defined. What was created was a body of literary work that truly came to shape modern erotic literature.

• The Dirty Realism Duo: Charles Bukowski & Raymond Carve (2008) by Michael Hemmingson
  Charles Bukowski and Raymond Carver were credited as the fathers of the "Dirty Realism" genre in the 1980s—branching out from minimalism, the stripping of fiction down to the least amount of words and a concentration on the subject's view of the object. The characters are usually run-of-the-mill, every day people—the lower and middle class worker, the unemployed, the alcoholic, the beaten-down-by-life. In this experimental monograph (in the vein of D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Contemporary American Fiction), avante/pop literary critic Michael Hemmingson examines these dirty works of Bukowski and Carver through the lens of late twentieth-century American culture and the sociological observation of the self, questioning the authority of the "I" in fiction and poetry and its relation to the eye's gaze of the words on a page. Hemmingson offers close readings of selected texts, deconstructing iconic works by Bukowski and Carver to point out the elements of dirty realism and mastery of the language of the common folk, proving that these two writers are an institution in American literature.

• Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast (2006) by David Charlson
  Charles Bukowski disliked academics, as this academic and readable book points out from page one onward of its introduction, "Charles Bukowski vs. American Ways." Begun before Bukowski died in 1994, Charles Bukowski: Autobiographer, Gender Critic, Iconoclast was the first doctoral dissertation on his prose and poetry up to that date, and it is offered now for fans and academics alike-no more need for black-market sales.
  
  The book's conclusion, "Summing Up: Giving Bukowski His Due," predicts that Bukowski will be read far into the 21st century. Buy his books before you buy this one.

• Charles Bukowski (2005) by Barry Miles
  A major new biography on an increasingly important American literary icon, by the most acclaimed writer on the Beat Generation, Barry Miles. Miles knew all the key players in the Beat era, including William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and also recorded with Bukowski. Having spoken with spoken with people close to Bukowski and fully examined Bukowski's extensive writings, Miles has written the definitive story of the 'laureate of American low-life' [Time]

• Charles Bukowski (Great Writers) (2004) by Michael Gray Baughan

• Visceral Bukowski: Inside The Sniper Landscape Of L.A. Writers (2004) by Ben Pleasants

• The Hunchback of East Hollywood: A Biography of Charles Bukowski (2003) by Aubrey Malone
  More renowned for his outrageous outbursts than anything he put on a page, Charles Bukowski is one of America's most misunderstood and under-appreciated writers. Charting his vexed re-lationships with women, employers, friends, colleagues and the tender mercies of the demon drink, The Hunchback of East Hollywood is the first book to study the writer's life and work in equal measure, focusing on the manner in which one impacted on the other. The Hunchback of East Hollywood gets inside the real Bukowski to deliver a full frontal assault on the publishing industry, and the most unlikely literary career in history. Also analyzes other works written about Bukowski over the years, up to and including Jean-Francois Duval's Bukowski and the Beats.

• Bukowski and the Beats: A Commentary on the Beat Generation (2002) by Jean-Francois Duval
  Translated from the French by Alison Ardron. Jean-Francois Duval gives us a close look at the links and contradictions between Bukowski and the Beat constellation. This is followed by a long interview with Buk: An Evening at Buk's Place.

• The Holy Grail: Charles Bukowski & the Second Coming Revolution (2002) by A. D. Winans

• Drinking with Bukowski: Recollections of the Poet Laureate of Skid Row (2001) by Danny Weitzman

• Bukowski for Beginners (For Beginners Series) ~ (2000) by Carlos Polimeni with Miguel Rep, Illustrator
  Since Charles Bukowski's death in 1994, his works, which are equally noted for their cynicism and their humor, have reached ever-larger audiences. He is the author of 45 books of essays, poetry, and fiction, including Betting on the Muse and Ham on Rye.

• Bukowski in Pictures  (2000) by Howard Sounes
  Bukowski in Pictures is the first pictorial biography of Charles Bukowski, legendary author of classic books such as Post Office, Ham on Rye and Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and the subject of the Hollywood movie Barfly. Bukowski's picaresque life - as driven writer, heavy drinker, Hollywood celebrity, family man and unlikely Don Juan - is illustrated with approximately two hundred photographs, many of which are published here for the first time. Friends, family and lovers have contributed candid photographs, and there are powerful new portraits by leading photographers. Extracts from personal letters and rare documents offer new insights that delve behind the public persona. The end result is a fascinating life in pictures that is essential for all Bukowski fans.

• "That's It.": A Final Visit With Charles Bukowski (2000) by Gundolf S. Freyermuth
  "That's it", portrait of Charles Bukowski combines interview and reporting with literary criticism. It renders a final and lasting picture of Charles Bukowski and assesses his importance as a writer. A "must read" for Bukowski fans.

• A Descriptive Bibliography of the Primary Publications of Charles Bukowski  (1999) by Aaron Krumhansl

• Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life  (1998) by Howard Sounes

• Bukowski: A Life by Neeli Cherkovski (1997)
  The only full biography of the celebrated cult figure and underground poet/novelist.

• Bukowski in the Bathtub: Recollections of Charles Bukowski (1997) by John Thomas with Philomene Long, ed.

• Charles Bukowski -- United States Authors Series (1997) by Gay Brewer

• The Buk Book: Musings on Charles Bukowski  (1997) by Jim Christy with Claude Powell, Photographer
  This book offers a unique look at the phenomenon Charles Bukowski-BUK-the battered and scarred postal clerk, odd-jobs man, and lowly factotum who became the best-known "underground" writer in the English language and whom Jean Genet described as "the best poet in America." His work-raw, crude, heartbreaking, and hilarious-has inspired imitators, emulators, sycophants, and detractors. In The BUK Book Jim Christy writes engagingly about the man, the myth, and his work. The book features 16 full-page photographs, all shot by Claude Powell, Bukowski's confidante and drinking buddy.

• Charles Bukowski: a Sure Bet (1996) by Gerald Locklin with Robert Crumb, Illustrator

• Against the American Dream: Essays on Charles  (1994) by Russell Harrison

• Hank: The Life of Charles Bukowski (1991) by Neeli Cherkovski

• Bukowski, the King of San Pedro (1985) by David Barker

• Charles Bukowski: Laughing with the Gods  (1982) by Fernanda Pivano
  In 1980 Fernanda Pivano, noted Italian critic, translator, and author, came to the United States to interview one of the world's singular writers, Charles Bukowski.

• Bukowski: Friendship, Fame & Bestial Myth  (1981) by Jory Sherman

• Charles Bukowski: A Critical and Bibliographical Study (1969) by Hugh Fox