Recent content by poptop

I was responding to zenguru's question without referring it to directly, since this thread is about Fante's life and biography. I should have quoted him in my post. It's a forum. If I've offended anyone, I offer my apology, but I stand behind every point I made on Fante's health because I...

Just a note on Fante's health. When one is a diabetic, or pre-diabetic, the condition messes with one's blood sugar level and can cause wide and irritable mood swings just based on the chemistry of it all. This is worth mentioning because Fante was known as a heavy drinker and sugar addict at...

I recall it being on 'Hostage' as well.

My impression was that London's Abyss read more like research, a sociological study, rather than what I would call a first-person literary account on poverty in the way that Bukowski or Hamsun would do; but there's a certain grace of writing and humanity - after all it's the great Jack London in...

From what I recall, I never got the impression that Bukowski considered Kerouac a bad writer or a competitor. What he objected to in one of his Free Press or Open City columns was the way Kerouac had put Neal up on such a g.d. idealistic pedestal - the unrealistic hero worship of the Beats, and...

A stretch back in time... The Big 20 bar and dive, whose passing Bukowski bitterly laments on the Bukowski Tapes, was located not far from here near the corner of Hollywood and Western, where the streetwalkers used to ply their trade on the passing motorists and later eat at Pioneer Chicken...

Being a health-nik, she may have added 10 years to Buk's life... apparently, she got him off the hard stuff, the processed junk food, and enlightened him about the benefits of vitamins, healthy fare and fine wines over Jack Daniels. I doubt whether he would have made it into the computer era...

I'd say it was like being on an acid trip for those who lived through the period of the "60s or have knowledge of it. The gov't Remote Viewing program the quirky humor is based on was actually funded by the U.S. for real - seriously funded to counter the psychic research and espionage of the...

I've enjoyed Factotum a number of times because its opening chapters are perfect examples of his simplicity of genius - describing something in the simplest and most direct way possible until the rest of the novel fleshes out from there, especially the rape scene in which 'he's' the victim -...

Haven't seen this book before either, but it looks like a hardcover. Blow it up and it appears to be a three word title (the first mostly obscured) with the second word ending in an apostrophe s and the last word Live. But it doesn't match any Bukowski title that I know of. I too would guess...

Having discovered Kerouac in my early twenties, I found On the Road and Dharma Bums to be thrilling rides - liberating and life-altering. They were unbelievably exciting at the time. He opened the reader to freedom, sexuality and the excitement of living in the moment. His writing was seamless...

This poem is an opportunity for you - perhaps a huge one. Place yourself in Bukowski's position in New Orleans - his sense of isolation, being away from people and the lostness of it all - and what it does to you is the meaning of the poem beyond trying to analyse or being strictly objective. He...

I've had no problem with it because I never read any of Bukowski's short story/poem collections straight through anyway. I would pick out whatever I was in the mood for at the time - all of it seemed fresh and new - and the totality of it somehow held together. I also felt that he considered...

No one can say for sure, but I'd say that it might have been that Bukowski overall was not in conflict with his need for drink: he considered it a godsend when he starting in as a teenage and never had the desire to quit except when he was forced to because of health reasons. He considered it an...

Outstanding. Thanks for sharing with the rest of us. Looks like it was done by an experienced master craftsman. There's something that gives it a certain soft glow on the skin and allows the myriad details of Bukowski and the background to hang nicely together beyond the ordinary. I continue to...