The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

Bukowski tends to, as far as I can tell, polarize readers something fierce. There are those who claim that he belongs among the highest pantheon of American writers for his no holds barred writings and ability to tell it like it is. Others will say that his stories aren't worth the paper they're printed on, full of trash writing and vulgarity, appealing to only the basest of emotions. While I don't think he's a literary genius, I certainly don't think his writing can be dismissed totally out of hand, at least not from the representative sample presented in this collection. Most of the stories focus on a male character, who may or may not be Bukowski, going about his day in some fashion, which will generally include drinking, picking up women or otherwise seeing whatever bizarre things lie at the edge of society. His style is deceptively simple, never flowery or ornate but somehow getting the point across anyway, at its best his words take on a Hemmingwayesque sparseness, the short declarative sentences forming a terse rhythm that gives them more resonance than you would otherwise think. Strangely enough a lot of those moments come at the end of a story, he's good at wrapping tales up, often finishing with a paragraph or two of sobering observation, capping it with some variation of a fatalistic, "well, whatever." At their heart the stories strike me as honest, they're rough and unadorned, but sincere all the same. The most honest ones may be the autobiographical-type tales, not knowing a whole lot about the man I can't tell how much is totally invented and how much was real but those ones (such as "Life and Death in the Charity Ward") have the ring of stark reality about them. He depicts life in the sideways corners, the people who hold the odd jobs, who need a drink to get through the day, the greasy squalor of it all, seen briefly admist the mess of neon lights and burnt out streetlamps, dirty apartments, sweaty desperate couplings, the hope of betting money at the race track and praying that this time, maybe, God willing, you might hit it big. Not huge, but just enough to live comfortably for just one more day. Bukowski depicts them, and by extension himself, unflinchingly and with equal parts contempt and sympathy. The people in his stories are just trying to live, the same as anyone else, and this is how they live. For all the vulgarity and whatnot, nothing in here really shocked me, even the most abrasive act is rendered somehow touching, either through his dry commentary or a dark bit of humor. Even "The Fiend", probably the most disturbing story in here, is balanced by the main character's fate at the end. This collection is by no means perfect, reading too many of these in a row could drive you mad, as a lot of it can strike you as variations on a theme. But read in small chunks, these stories act like the best kind of punk rock music, it says what it has to say and gets the heck out, with not a single word wasted. For t

Bukowski was a writer of porn for the literary world. He didn't mask the perverseness of his thoughts or pretend to be civil in the traditional sense, not to women, not to himself, not to his highly esteemed contemporaries. He chose to write what he thought and not hide behind the ribbons and bows of classic literature. Bukowski tried (or maybe not... vulgar charm) to give his landscape to his readers in all its ugly glory and succeeded brilliantly.

Check out the other review close to mine. What a bunch of gobbledygook. Dude, never slam an author with a review that is even muddier than the book you are slamming. First of all, what are "the issues we have judged to be important in good writing"?Are you saying that to have any credibility, all authors must limit their work to seperation of church and state? And don't try to impress us with words like 'inchoate'. Nobody knows what that means. The reason you don't like Bukowski is because your writing is so much like his, except more pretentious. Maybe with a few drinks in you, you'd loosen up and make it as Bukowski imitator.

Stephen Crane wrote "Magie" and did a good job. Bukowski wrote three pages and turned me inside out. I had just finished reading Cranes book when I found a copy of Bukowski's story and became a believer. How does Bukowski get the power into such a small space? Crane used a small book to tell his story. Some people read it and liked what they read. Bukowski's story has me rethinking what I knew about stories and looking for more of Buck's stuff.

I stumbled into City Lights Books in SF and they recommended Bukowski. Always skeptical of "artistic literary" types, I decided to pick out a book of short stories to entertain my MTV attention span. I was very delighted with Bukowski's stories. Some are very creative (eg. Swastika) and most are downright vulgar! Throw in a bit of tragedy and a ton of tasteless humor (6 inches and The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, CA comes to mind) and you've got an idea of Bukowski's work. At many times, I found myself laughing out loud (very unusual for me) with his stories. I will probably pick up the second part of his short story volume (Tales of Ordinary Madness) as well as Post Office. Mad immortal tales, indeed.