Books like Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader

It's like the Modest Mouse song "Bukowski" says: He's a pretty good read, but who'd wanna be such an asshole? At least Charles Bukowski came by his assholery honestly -- "born into this sorrowful deadliness" -- not like that overgrown fratboy date-rapist Jack Kerouac. Bukowski was ostracized in school, abused at home, grotesquely scarred by acne and largely unloved. So he started hating back, channeling his hurt and rage into prose and poetry that was plainspoken but eloquent and occasionally even beautiful in its own grimy way. Like the last girl at the bar at closing time. Once he got published and semifamous and the literary cult formed around him, Bukowski had no shortage of company from mustachioed skanks and slumming celebrities. And Bono, Lord help poor Bukowski. But the bile never dried up, and the poison, tho slightly tempered by old age, kept flowing onto the page. In Bukowski's world, everyone is rotten and corrupt except for the Bukowski-stand-in narrator, and he's rotten and corrupt, but at least he has some integrity about it. "Run With the Hunted" is sort of a Bukowski Greatest Hits collection of poems and short stories and novel excerpts arranged in a way to serve as a ramshackle autobiography. It's not something I'd recommend reading from cover to cover. The constant misanthropy and misogyny and drunken self-abuse can get a little tiring. But it's a good book to dip into and sample, and every so often, you might find surprising spots of warmth and tenderness.