The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

previous - next - random review

Charles Bukowski, "Run With the Hunted"

Started January 4 - Finished Jan 5, 2002; 512 pages. Posted 5 January 2002

"Beware Those Who are ALWAYS READING BOOKS"
-The Genius of the Crowd, Charles Bukowski

After staying in my room and reading seven books in three days, I got worried that I may turn into something out of "A Beautiful Mind" or maybe "Searching for Bobby Fisher." It was time to get some social interaction. I went to the bar. And who better to bring to a bar than Bukowski?

From the "Acknowledgements" page: "The material in this Bukowski reader is taken from the more than twenty novels, books of short stories, and volumes of poetry that Bukowski has published with Black Sparrow Press over the last 25 years." In other words, "Oh shit, this guy is dead, how can we make some more money off of him?"

Well, they figured it out. Let's get this straight: I really liked Bukowski when I was younger. At the time I was an impressionable youth who was just entertaining the notions of becoming a writer or a drunk. Bukowski meshed the two, why couldn't I? Voila! But I suppose I should clarify something. I liked his novels and short stories. I couldn't stand his poetry (or anybody else's, for that matter). So, as I'm going through this, I'm re-reading stuff from "Ham On Rye," "Post Office," "Hollywood," and a shitload of others, interspersed with poetry. Some of it was fun to read again, and I started to take his poetry like a form of his short story writing, albeit with no punctuation or coherent style of sentence structure. Unfortunately, they didn't reprint the one poem I did like: "I saw a commercial the other day that said Farmer John smokes his own bacon. Now that's one tough son of a bitch."

But I noticed something else while reading in between the times where I ruled the pool table for over two hours: Bukowski stories happen all the time, it's just not as noticeable when you are out with your friends. If you're willing to go to a dive bar alone and just observe, you can see any of his short stories come to life. It certainly happened to me, complete with winos hitting on drunken females, wannabe tough-guy bartenders, false complements and allegiances paid to the pool player on a hot streak (me), and lots of women with big asses.

But there's one thing for
Certain
When you write

like

this

it's very easy to finish a
five-hundred-
page
book
in a short amount
of
time.

There's no need to pick this up if you are a fan; you probably have everything that's printed here. Otherwise, this is a good intro into his writing.


Rating: Work at a bookstore and get it for cheap.

previous - next - random review