Bukowski in Pictures

Rating:
Summary: Everything You Wanted To See About Buk
Review: An excellent & well laid-out book displaying the life of Charles Bukowski. The book shows the real people & places depicted in Buk's poems & stories. It even has a photo of his grave which brings it home that such a lively individual is no longer with us even though new books of his unpublished/uncollected poems continue to be published. Alan/2001

Rating:
Summary: Everything You Wanted To See About Buk
Review: An excellent & well laid-out book displaying the life of Charles Bukowski. The book shows the real people & places depicted in Buk's poems & stories. It even has a photo of his grave which brings it home that such a lively individual is no longer with us even though new books of his unpublished/uncollected poems continue to be published. Alan/2001

Rating:
Summary: ... He Was Ugly!
Review: But serously, as a Bukowski fan this book is a treasure. There are many wonderful, never-before-seen photos of this the Quasimodo of Modern American Literature (and great photos of other folks as well). I do agree with the reviewers who think there are too many pictures of streets and places, however, I think the idea here is to give us an idea of the down and out lifestyle Buk lived (for much of his lilfe) and then how that all changed. I also agree with reviewer Jennifer that the picture with Silverstein is one of the best, and most surprising, in the bunch. Well, maybe not so surprising as they both submitted work to ... mags! A note to another reviewer about all the mistakes; first, some of the misspellings are actually British spellings of words (Sounes is British), and the copy I have, at least, is from a British publisher; second, it's not the author's fault there are misspellings or misinformation of any sort, that's the editor/publisher's fault (they're the ones who're supposed to check these things). But kudos to a careful reader. It's nice to see Steve Richmond reviewing books he obviously has a vested interest in, anything having to do with Buk that even so much as mentions him he's got to pontificate on. You're in the new book of letters too. Cheers, Steve. Anyway, a great book about a great writer.

Rating:
Summary: yes, but.....
Review: Have to have it if like Buk, but, there are so many errors in the book, missing words etc. that it made me think it was thrown together too quickly on the heals of his last book, Sounes that is, that it sort of makes me think poorly of it. Some of the pic's as well are filler, shots of streets in LA there were like the streets that Buk wandered. Regardless, I had to have it.

Rating:
Summary: Invaluable for Bukowski readers
Review: Howard Sounes has created in photographs what he previously created in words, that is a highly entertaining and complete and even more important, truthful and factually correct account of the life and times of Mr Charles Bukowski. BUKOWSKI IN PICTURES begins with photos of the great writer as an infant, and ends with photos of his tombstone ("Don't Try" being etched into same) and very peaceful final resting place.

Between the birth and death pictures are about 200 pages of around one thousand wonderful color and black & white pictures of Bukowski at every facet of his life, riding a pony as a kid, with grammar school classmates, with high school classmates, as a tot in his dad's arms, and on and on covering every year of his life right on to the final years as one of our planet's most successful scribes both financially and creatively. His huge lifetime body of published works remains unmatched, and when joined with his thousands of paintings, drawings, puts him in the same world class of mega-artists such as William Blake, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and the hundred or so other artist-giants of the human experience and experiment on Earth.

Howard Sounes is up to the challenge. Sounes doesn't back down from describing the complete Bukowski, including those well documented horrible sides of Bukowski's character, which Sounes is able to fully analyze and comment upon in various captions to photos and the inclusion of consise paragraphs which this reviewer finds make this volume excel even more so.

This is a very strong book worth twice as much at the bookstores than is being asked, in my opinion. A Bukowski fan can "read" through this volume with even more enjoyment than those more wordy biographies of Bukowski provide. All the cast of friends, legions of girlfriends, and wives and publishers of Bukowski works, literary peers and allies and even some literary enemies, are herein officially documented in the best photographs available.

Luckily permissions to reprint were granted by all involved. History, Earth's most important and vital literary history, is the big winner here.

Rating:
Summary: excellent!
Review: Lots of pictures & worth the money. I bought mine at Borders--and don't regret it. Howard Sounes did a wonderful job of putting it all together. Even includes photos of some of Bukowski's old haunts (bars and such where he hung out), as well photos taken when he lived in various dives before he made it. Photos of his daughter Marina, photos of some of the women he dated--and even one of the great love of his life: Jane Cooney Baker. Not to be missed. Top notch all the way. I'd like to see them do a sequel to this. Get it if you can!

Rating:
Summary: Good visual aid for his novels...
Review: This book is a must have for anyone who likes Buk. Fans will recognize many of the women that Buk wrote about in his novels and poems. My fave pict is the famous bust from "Women" and the sculptress who made it. Some of the pictures are mundane -- like the pict of Buk's refrigerator and picts from Philly around the time he lived here, but it's worth it. There are some fairly scary picts of Buk with his belly hanging out. The book gives perspective to Bukowski's life and his writing. (My other favorite picture is Buk with Shel Silverstein.)

Rating:
Summary: A strange world, an unapologetic man
Review: Wow! There is definitely a whole world where Allie Mcbeal-esque angst does not exist and I think I like it. Bukowski, of which this book was my introduction, is wholly unapologetic about his life, loves, lusts and somewhat audacious lifestyle.

I was going to say that Bukowski is more a man's writer than a women's although I wondered about the reaction to that as so many women clearly love him. But his writing is so steeped in the seedy, upfront, hard-nosed male appealing style. Maybe it is just that it is that I only know males who have read his works. Either way he is a strange fish. After this I went on to read a book of people's impressions of Buck, much more informative I think. In this I felt a little like I was left with his reflection rather than a clear insight into him.

An interesting way of meeting Buck to see if you like his stuff, or him at all.

Rating:
Summary: For your Bukowski library
Review: You should develop a taste for Bukowski's writing before delving into this 153-page album, because many of the photos, taken at face value, are a bit repulsive. (Bukowski fans, however, seem to develop a tolerance for the face, and in fact, it's a significant part of Bukowski's mystique.) There are about 240 pix in the book, several showing the covers of his various publications. A good many are pretty fuzzy snapshots, although Bukwoski fans should find that of little import. They suit me fine, because I'm always curious about where and how people live, whom they associate with, and how they carry on their daily lives. The text is derived from Howard Sounes' research for his biography of Bukowski, and some of the photos appear in that book. Absent from that bio and from "Bukowski in Pictures" are any of the excellent photos by Michael Montfort, who shot most if not all of the author photos appearing in Bukowski's Black Sparrow Press editions, including the photos appearing in "Shakespeare Never Did This." All in all, I consider this a valuable addition to a Bukowski collector's library.