I finally got around to order Absence of the Hero and I am about halfway through it. It's a beautiful job again, a very good and interesting collection of texts.
I still can't get over the fact what an unusual story "Love, Love, Love" seems to be. For Bukowski, I mean, come on, Brother George with his war experiences? Wtf? I'd say it smells a lot like Salinger, although Salinger wasn't even on the screen at the time this was written and published. It's strange. Or maybe Salinger smelled like early, unpublished Bukowski ;)
"The Rapist's Story" was a better read the second time, although I still find the whole worm-thing rather stupid and obvious. I think what he wanted to do here was a big and difficult ("literary") idea, taking one of the most taboo crimes of our times (raping a little child) and mold it into something else, getting the reader to feel sympathy for the "rapist". This seems an idea he played with again and again, as in "The Fiend". But where "The Fiend" is shocking and right into the face of the reader without explanations or whatever, "The Rapist's Story" is kind of begging around for understanding or sympathy or something. I don't know, it simply seems like trying to me, the whole story, and as we all know, that's something you bon't.