Septuagenarian Stew: Stories and Poems

by Charles Bukowski

Overview

“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles."—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author

“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter

Septuagenarian Stew is a combination of poetry and stories written by Charles Bukowski that delve into the lives of different people on the backstreets of Los Angeles. He writes of the housewife, the bum, the gambler and the celebrity to evoke a portrait of Los Angeles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780876857946
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/31/2002
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.94(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.

Date of Birth:

August 16, 1920

Date of Death:

March 9, 1994

Place of Birth:

Andernach, Germany

Place of Death:

San Pedro, California

Education:

Los Angeles City College, 2 years

Editorial Reviews

In his latest collection, prolific Bukowski ( Hollywood ) confronts the reader with many of the same down-and-out themes he has been writing about for years. His work for the most part is populated here with society's losers--alcoholic bums, mad housewives, compulsive gamblers--their decaying selves slipping inexorably into oblivion. Life's supposed winners fare no better. The movie star in the story ``Fame'' is murdered by a fanatic fan. The writer in ``Action,'' who once smugly refused the Pulitzer Prize, squanders all his money at the racetrack and wastes his creative abilities in the process. Even the author's fictionalized self, Henry Chinaski, rescued from being ``a pile of human rubble'' by an editor interested in his work, can never transcend the junk heap of human existence. He continues to rely, paradoxically, on booze to help him survive. Bukowski's rejection of the redemptive power of love and his refusal to probe the psychological origins of his and his characters' behavior limits the validity of his message. Aside from several arresting images and some entertaining dialogue, the writing is flat and uninspired. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The prolific poet laureate of the lowlife celebrates his 70th birthday with this long, uneven melange of tales and poems. Many explore familiar Bukowski subjects of alcohol, sex, gambling, writing, and the violence at the heart of human relationships. Taking place on the Los Angeles backstreets, they sympathetically depict individuals whose lives are circumscribed by barrooms and bad jobs. Other pieces present a different view, as Bukowski looks at the vicissitudes of life as a wealthy and famous writer or faces fears of physical and artistic decline. Harry Chinaski, Bukowski's cynical, misogynistic, yet ultimately sympathetic alter ego appears throughout. There is an excellent 200-page book among the nearly 400 pages gathered here. For larger collections.-- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.

Library Journal