It's funny you resurrected the thread just when I was about to post my expressions about the book.
I recently read (the whole of)
Bukowski and the Beats and liked the part about the connection between the gang and the loner as much as the interview. The photos are really great and Duval supplied lots of valuable facts about numerous American writers & freaks (the Notes/Biblio/Who's Who? part is worth the price of the book alone).
There are a few slips however that make me wonder about the author's depth of research and attention to details:
his last wife Linda Lee Bukowski (page 22)
Doesn't "last" imply that Buk had more wives (at least one) before Linda Lee? It may be possible, but...
Those realities he experienced through the hundreds of dead-end jobs, reluctantly toiled at for forty years around the country. (page 24)
Buk didn't had dead-end jobs for 40 years, specially not 40 years around the country.
(writing Post Office inspired Buk in 1969 to leave his job of the past 11 years) (page 24)
I reckon it was vice versa.
In Hollywood... the director Joe Pinchot (a pseudonym for Barbet Schroeder, the director of Barfly) (page 108)
It's Jon, not Joe.
... there is a photograph with Buk pictured next to a woman known as Georgia... Hank... has his arm around the woman's shoulders. (page 125)
In the (in)famous photo Buk's right hand is around Georgia's waist.
He's holding a beer in his left hand.
Georgia was only a passing, casual affair to him... (page 125)
I believe she was just a friend, but this may be arguable.
That day Hank was expecting Joan Levine Gannij, a freelance photographer who jumped at the opportunity to immortalize Georgia next to Hank for a future book called Frigid:Air. (page 125)
What happened to Ulvis Alberts?
All this makes me cautious about the other facts in the book, but I still think it's worth buying.
P.S. I read the book in English, so (some of) the slips may be due to translation.