Kerouac Alley*

The Beat Generation Multimedia Pages

www.kerouacalley.com
A Directory of the Beat Generation
and the Beat Related on the World Wide Web

*Jack Kerouac Alley (formerly Adler Alley or Adler Place) is a one-way alleyway in Chinatown, San Francisco, California that connects Grant Avenue and Columbus Avenue, running between "Vesuvio Cafe" (255 Columbus Ave.) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "City Lights Books" (261 Columbus Ave.).

Charles Bukowski 1920-1994

Charles Bukowski Quotes

“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.” -Charles Bukowski

“Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.” -Charles Bukowski

“It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.” -Charles Bukowski

'There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.” -Charles Bukowski

“That is what friendship means. Sharing the prejudice of experience.” -Charles Bukowski

“I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there” -Charles Bukowski

“To do a dull thing with style-now THAT'S what I call art.” -Charles Bukowski

“Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.” -Charles Bukowski

“Never get out of bed before noon” -Charles Bukowski

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” -Charles Bukowski

“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.” -Charles Bukowski

“You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” -Charles Bukowski

“There are worse things than being alone,” -Charles Bukowski

“I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.” -Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Videos

Bukowski	Bukowski: Poetry and Motion	Charles Bukowski (dinosauria, we)	Charles Bukowski On The Hustle
Charles Bukowski "Bluebird."	Take a ride with Charles Bukowski	Charles Bukowski Fire Station (For Jane With Love)	Charles Bukowski A Last Shot On Two Good Horses
Charles Bukowski Interview by Martin Coenen Clip	Charles Bukowski It's Good To Be Back Documentary part 1	Charles Bukowski It's Good To Be Back Documentary part 2	Charles Bukowski Interview Clip Martin Coenen part 2/2

Charles Bukowski August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994, was a Los Angeles poet and novelist. Bukowski is sometimes associated with the Beat Generation writers because of his informal style and non-conformist literary attitude and is often called an author of the second wave Beat Generation, though he did not identify himself as such. Bukowski closely associated his works with the city of Los Angeles and published more than fifty books before his death.

Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 after his mother, a German, met his father, an American serviceman, during the occupation of Germany at the end of World War I. The family moved to Los Angeles when he was two years old. During the Great Depression, his father was often unemployed, and according to Bukowski, verbally and physically abusive. This may have contributed to his alcoholism. After graduating from Los Angeles High School, he attended Los Angeles City College for one year, taking courses in art, journalism, and literature.

At age 24, Bukowski's short story "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" was published in Story Magazine. Two years later, another short story, "20 Tanks From Kasseldown," was published in Portfolio III's broadside collection. He became disillusioned with the publication process and quit writing for nearly ten years, spending this period in Los Angeles, and roaming across the United States, working at odd jobs and staying in inexpensive hotels and rooming houses. In the early 1950's he took a temporary job as a letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service in LA, but quit after less than two years. In 1955 he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer that was nearly fatal. After leaving the hospital, he resumed drinking and began to write poetry.

He returned to the post office in LA, where he worked as a clerk for more than a decade. In 1965 a daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, was born to Bukowski and Frances Smith. Smith and Bukowski lived together but were never married. In 1969 at age 49, he was promised a monthly stipend of $100 "for life" from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin. Bukowski quit the job at the post office to make writing his full time career. In a letter at the time, he wrote: "I have one of two choices--stay in the post office and go crazy...or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve." Less than one month after leaving the postal service he finished his first novel, titled Post Office. In 1976 Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food store owner. Two years later they moved from the East Los Angeles area, where Bukowski lived for most of his life, to the town of San Pedro. Bukowski and Beighle were married in 1985.

Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the late 1950s and continuing on through the early 1990s, with the poems and stories being republished by Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins/ECCO) as collected volumes of his work. A prolific author, Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually having more than fifty books in print.

Bukowski wrote that Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, John Fante, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and others as influences on his writing. In a 1974 interview, he said, "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every street corner. You've got the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are....Since I was raised in L.A., I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I've had time to learn this city. I can't see any other place than L.A."

Since his death in 1994, Bukowski has been the subject of a number of critical articles and books about both his life and writings. While becoming an icon to the disaffected and those with problems stemming from alcoholism, academic critics have not accorded his work seriously. A documentary movie of his life, Bukowski: Born Into This, was released in 2004.

• 55 beds in the same direction (1974)
• A Bukowski Sampler (1969)
• A Love Poem (1979)
• A New War (1997)
• All the Assholes in the World and Mine (1966)
• Alone In A Time Of Armies (1985)
• Another Academy (1970)
• Art (1977)
• At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968)
• Beauti-Ful (1988)
• Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001)
• Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
• Between The Earthquake (1993)
• Bone Palace Ballet (1997)
• Bring Me Your Love (illustrated by Robert Crumb) (1983) ISBN 0876856067
• Burning in Water Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973 (1974)
• Cold Dogs in the Courtyard (1965)
• Confession Of A Coward (1995)
• Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts (1965)
• Crucifix in a Deathhand (1965)
• Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
• Darkness & Ice (1990)
• Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
• Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972)
• Factotum (1975)
• Fire Station (1970)
• Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960)
• Going Modern (1984)
• Gold In Your Eye (1986)
• Grip the walls (1964)
• Ham On Rye (1982)
• Heat Wave (1995)
• Hollywood (1989)
• Horsemeat (1982)
• Horses Don't Bet on People and Neither Do I (1984) Hot Water Music (1983)
• If we take (1969)
• If You Let Them Kill You They Will (1989)
• In The Morning And At Night (1991)
• In The Shadow Of The Rose (1991)
• It Catches My Heart in Its Hand (1963)
• Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
• Legs, Hips and Behind (1978)
• Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s, Volume 2 (1995)
• Longshot Pomes for Broke Players (1962)
• Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)
• Luck (1987)
• Me and your sometimes love poems (1972)
• Mockingbird, Wish Me Luck (1972)
• Night's work (1966)
• Not Quite Bernadette (1990)
• Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)
• Now (1992)
• One For The Old Boy (1984)
• Open All Night (2000)
• People Poems (1991)
• Pink Silks (2001)
• Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)
• Poems Written Before Jumping out of an 8 Story Window (1968)
• Popcorn In The Dark (2000)
• Post Office (1971) ISBN 0876850875
• Pulp (1994)
• Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994, Volume 3 (1999)
• Red (1989)
• Relentless As The Tarantula (1986)
• Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (1988)
• Run with the Hunted (1962)
• Run with the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader (1993)
• Scarlet (1976)
• Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993)
• Septuagenarian Stew: Stories and Poems (1990)
• Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
• Shakespeare Never Did This (augmented edition) (1995)
• Sifting Through The Madness for the Word, The Line, The Way: New Poems (2003) ISBN 00600568232
• Slouching Toward Nirvana (2005)
• South of No North (1973)
• Sparks (1983)
• The Bukowski/Purdy Letters (1983)
• The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
• The Day it Snowed in L.A. (1986)
• The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems (2004) ISBN 0060577010
• The Genius of the Crowd (1966)
• The Last Generation (1982)
• The Last Poem & Tough Company (1976)
• The Laughing Heart (1996)
• The Movie "Barfly" (1987)
• The Movie Critics (1988)
• The night torn mad with footsteps (2001)
• The Simple Truth (2002)
• The Singer (1999)
• The Wedding (1986)
• There's No Business (illustrated by Robert Crumb) (1984)
• This (1990)
• Those Marvelous Lunches (1993)
• Three Poems (1992)
• To Lean Back Into It (1998)
• War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984)
• We Ain't Got No Money Honey (1989)
• What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999)
• Women (1978)
• You Get So Alone at Times It Just Makes Sense (1986)
• You Kissed Lilly (1978)

Charles Bukowski Internet Directory

Charles Bukowski : @ "Fantastic Fiction"	Charles Bukowski: An Introduction	Charles Bukowski : Anti-Hero	"Charles Bukowski" : The Great Poet
Post Angelic Musing for Charles Bukowski: @ Wikipedia	Charles Bukowski: Selected Poems	Charles Bukowski: @ Books & Writers	Charles Bukowski: A Brief Bio
Charles Bukowski Gesellschaft: German Language	City Lights Bookseller & Publisher	"These Words I Write. . ." : Charles Bukowski	Web Page: Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski: @ "Literary Kicks"	Charles Bukowski: @ "Literary Kicks" 2	Charles Bukowski: @ Poetry Reviews	Charles Bukowski: "Buk"
Charles Bukowski: @ Smog.Net	Charles Bukowski: @ The Academy of American Poets	Charles Bukowski: @ "The Beat Page"	The Charles Bukowski Memorial Center : for Classical Latin Studies
	Charles Bukowski: French Language	Charles Bukowski: At About.Com	All Poems: Poem Hunter
Herzlich Willkommen: Charles Bukowski (German Language)	Bukowski: @ Black Sparrow Graphic Arts	BUKOWSKI ZINE : Charles Bukowski	Charles Bukowski: @ Britannica Online
Forum Frigate : Charles Bukowski	Charles Bukowski: A Tribute to Genius	Charles Bukowski: @ The Beat Museum	Charles Bukowski: Poems
		Charles Bukowski: @ Maison d'Être Beatnik Coffeehouse	Charles Bukowski: Site From Brazil (Portuguese Language)
Charles Bukowski: @ IMDB	Charles Bukowski: @ Answers.Com	Charles Bukowski: @ Today in Literature	Charles Bukowski: Excerpt from "Peace Ants" - 1968
Charles Bukowski: Quotes	Charles Bukowski: Spanish Language	Charles Bukowski, 1920-1994 By Suzanne Lummis: LA Times Book Review	Charles Bukowski: Two Letters
Charles Bukowski: @ National Public Radio (NPR)	Charles Bukowski: Mike Hobo's Ledgendary Web Site	Charles Bukowski: @ The Literary Encyclopedia	Charles Bukowski's Barfly:: The Dignity and Depravity of Emotion
Charles Bukowski:: PAL: Perspectives in American Literature	Charles Bukowski:: @ Salon.Com	Charles Bukowski:: Bio & Links	Charles Bukowski:: The Bukowski Tapes - 1983
Charles Bukowski @ "Beat Scene"	Telegraph Hill Books, Etc. Beat Generation Books & Beat Era Jazz

Search Kerouac Alley