Open All Night

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 4 SEP. 2000

During his lifetime, Bukowski (1920-94) acquired a global following for his verse and prose depictions of down-and-outs, small-time gamblers and tormented, ambitious failures in his native Los Angeles. The confrontational post-Beat poet and novelist left behind a vast archive of manuscripts, from which this seventh posthumous book of verse has been drawn. The thick volume (like his other books) includes plenty of casual anecdotes, fiery catalogues of others' woes, and dejected musings on his own persistent drinking, sometime poverty, and mood swings. It includes, too, the off-color language and sexual escapades (some triumphant, most embarrassing) that have always ranked among Bukowski's attractions. His familiar world of "bums and heroes" in "tiny rooms" where "each meal was/ a miracle and/ the week's rent/ more so" comes to the fore quickly, and as usual, there's something to it. Heroes range from anonymous pals to Toulouse-Lautrec and Delmore Schwartz. Some poems examine Bukowski's problematic attitudes toward sex and romance: "no matter what woman I'm with," Bukowski declares in one such poem, "people ask me,/ are you still with her?" Bukowskian figures more typically find solace at racetracks, with whores, with liquor ("I drank and I drank and/ I drank in my room") and finally in writing, which lets them "kiss the sweet lips of this dirty/ world/ goodbye." Nobody will be converted to Bukowski by these verses, but that's hardly the point: like William Burroughs or Jim Morrison, Bukowski in death retains the tenacious (and mostly youthful) fan base he gathered in life.