The Captain is Out to Lunch

You can tell he is older... He has a computer and enjoys typing on it. I can hear the buttons being pushed and the symphony music in the background in some entries. He still goes to the races. Death emerges as a theme in these pages more than anything else I have read of his, I have mostly read his earlier stuff. But the collection of essays were good and kept me entertained. He is one of the best and even to the end he kept his work honest, or so I think.

If Bukowski has been meaningful to you, then this book is a fitting cap to the earlier pomes and novels. I find it gratifying to see the old man living and reflecting, and perhaps suffering a bit less.As usual, Crumb's illustrations are the perfect complement. Nobody can visualize Buk like Crumb can.Highly recommended after you've read already gotten to know Bukowski. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here, the old dragon has lost alot of his fire, but he still writes very pleasingly. I'm 45, and I can relate to the diminished feeling of these stories. I always read Bukowski for the black humor, and there's some funny stuff here. There's one bit about a guy at the racetrack who Bukowski calls "The Screamer", that's a real howler. And the R. Crumb illustration accompanying this anecdote complements it perfectly. All the illustrations are good. This a good, worthwhile book for Bukowsi fans.

This book is ,no doubt, an important piece of the whole picture bukowski. But the old rebell, the barfly cannot be found in bukowskis last work. Take the computer and the pool for an example, what has this to do with the bukowski who wrote those action packed stories? He lost the control over his life, the control that was sometimes the only thing he had. This is a book to show the end of a great author, but not a book that stands for bukowskis work.

Okay, Buk's been gone what, four years? Five? This has got to be at least his fourth new book since he shuffled off this mortal coil. Kinda spooky, eh? To top it off, this book is great! It works, in many ways, as a bookend to Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Buk's old now and, though he doesn't quite know it, is not so far from death. The book is made up of journal entries of his daily travails. He spends a lot of time at the track and a lot of time thinking about the writing life. The prose sparkles in that wonderful Bukowski way. If you thought you'd never see any good new Bukowski stuff, think again. The old man delivers the goods from Heaven.