"In the echo chamber of the Internet, the idolatry of some of his enthusiastic admirers can assume exaggerated import."
Jeez, I can't imagine who they are referring to there!
I'm not sure I would say that the article "got it right" though. It repeats yet again the notion that the posthumously published work is lesser; "Bukowski's work has always been uneven, a matter compounded by the extraordinary number of additional poems to appear posthumously," and it seeks to bestow some sort of "validity" onto him by listing the commercial uses of his work and comparing him to academically accepted literary figures.
The posthumous books are lesser, without a doubt, which we know is primarily due to Martin's muddling, but I have not seen one scrap of evidence that suggests that the work itself was any better or worse than all of his work. For an article to "get it right" they would have to actually dig a little deeper than the surface and talk about that muddling, and so far no one (outside of the "echo chamber of the Internet") seems interested.
But ultimately and tellingly, the Los Angeles Times never did shit for Bukowski when he could have used their support. They only piled on in his later life, not long before he died. Like almost every other institution, they waited until he was safely buried in the dirt to dare to tentatively "honor" him.
So I'm afraid I have to say, fuck the Los Angeles Times, and while we're at it, fuck the usual cast of decrepit leeches who gather on his anniversaries to get their names into the paper. Hangers-on and glad-handlers the lot of them, the likes of which Bukowski spent a lifetime railing against. Everyone seems to overlook the comic irony of that. Pour one out for Hank!, you vampires.
Re: Barkowski, there hasn't been anything in recent memory that generated more email addressed to me or the site than that thing. They must have had some PR firm sending them. It was an inbox tsunami of idiotic promotion. Which is reasonable, I suppose, considering the place was created to attract idiots.
Look at that, I set out to type a reasoned and rational counterpoint, and I did it!
Wait, I didn't do that at all.
Well, maybe next time.