Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960 - 1970

Rating:
Summary: Charles Bukowski at his drunkest
Review: This book bounces all over the place, though it's written in such afreeform style that nothing necessarily needs to make sense,and the sentencesthat run on for a couple of pages without punctuation can get tiresome. But definitely reccomended for CB fans... he speaks his truest.

Rating:
Summary: jarring
Review: Will jar the senses. Nothing cute here. The author, Bukowski, barely holding on by his fingertips (before he started to make any money with his literary eforts.) Highly recommend it to anyone who preffers the real to the slickly put together phony books out there by so-called writers being published by the bloated, greedy East Coast houses who don't know what the hell they're doing. Why so harsh? Because I don't see any originality in books put out by them, that's why. How can that be? Ask them. In their desperate, stupid efforts to make every book a sure-fire best-seller they put editors on it who beat all originality right out of these manuscripts. Thus, usually, we are left with unreadable garbage lacking real style and/or originality. And Bukowski? Well, the reason Black sparrow took him on is because his writing was not about that phony slickness that so often New York publishers seem to want and pay the big bucks for (only to fall on their butts--more often than not). Bukowski's style brings to mind another writer or two: Kirk Alex (Working the Hard Side of the Street), Dan Fante: Mooch, Spitting off Tall Buildings, etc. Buy it, read it, and find out what life was like for the man who brought you Post Office, Hollywood, and other masterpieces before the well-earned rocognition towards the latter part of his life. Sadly, he is no longer with us, but his books are. For that we are grateful. Our hat is off to John Martin at Black Sparrow. Thank you, sir, for publishing the books.