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Notes of a Dirty Old Man

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 8,070 ratings · 190 reviews

"People come to my door—too many of them really—and knock to tell me Notes of a Dirty Old Man turns them on. A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk. . . drink half the night. A long distance operator from Newburgh, N.Y. sends me money. She wants me to give up drinking beer and to eat well. I hear from a madman who calls himself 'King Arthur' and live...more

Paperback, 204 pages

Published January 1st 2001 by City Lights Publishers (first published 1969)

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Community Reviews

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Oct 24, 2008 Caris rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's been three long days since I finished Notes. Under ordinary circumstances, this is where I'd move on to something else and forget everything about it. The whole reason for joining good reads was to keep track of all those books I simply cannot remember reading. Almost everything I pick up seems to be destined for this list- an attempt to remember the forgotten...the fallen comrades who have helped shape me into who I am today. If it sounds dramatic, maybe it is.

This one, though, isn't easy...more

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Nov 28, 2011 Dania rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really don't get what makes Bukowski so profound. Notes of a Dirty Old Man is the ramblings of a drunk and dirty gambler, always looking for his next drink or screw. Bukowski's writing is called Dirty Realism. That pretty much sums this particular book up. This book is a collection of little snippets of stories, based on Bukowski's life. He has no goals or aspirations. He barely works. The only thing he seems to have going for him is a large penis, but in my opinion, he's so dirty, smelly, and...more

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Jul 02, 2008 Bryan Mclellan rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Abner

Recommended to Bryan by: Amazon

Rating books with stars, like bars or restaurants or anything else is pretty silly.

This was a good book to read at night while drinking pints at pubs in Seattle. A collection of "articles" from a small(?) paper in Los Angeles (?), there's no apparent chronology or order of any kind to them. If there is, it's deep an intellectual.

And after all, an intellectual takes something simple and makes it complex, while an artist takes something complex and makes it simple. (Indirect book quote)

I'm reminde...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Raegan Butcher rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bukowksi worked well when given every writers dream: carte blanche to write whatever he felt like writing, only to have it reproduced by the LA FREE PRESS and on the streets in a week, being read by thousands. Bukowski himself writes of the magical feeling of having the freedom to write whatever he wanted and the sudden notoriety he aquired with his new exposure. This collection of stories, as opposed to the ones collected elsewhere, show him still experimenting with a variety of forms and these...more

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Jun 13, 2013 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars

Culled from the columns of an underground newspaper that he was writing for at the time, this is a collection of stories which are mostly autobiographical, occasionally fanciful and sometimes downright surreal. The book meanders like the mind of a drunk, recalling the highs and lows (okay, lows and really down-dirty lows) of a penniless dipsomaniac as he fucks and fights his way through life, trying to eke out a living as a poet and writer while doing as little actual work as possible.
Like the r...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Jack Stevenson rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is essentially a collection of Charles Bukowski's writings for an underground newspaper from the late 1960s. It's semi-autobiographical in that some appear to be true stories from his life, some are blatantly fictional, and some are written from the viewpoint of his alter-ego.

This book isn't going to be for everyone. Bukowski is an unapologetic dirty old man, as the title of the book would suggest, and positively revels in stumbling around America, drinking and fighting and having sex with...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Dolly Delightly rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sitting inertly in the mid-afternoon sun, after a night of hellish revelry, I tried to shut out my companion’s comical cooing by losing myself in a book. I have been a little slack with my reading lately, thus needed a metaphorical kick up the posterior to propel me out of the lethargy. Earlier in the day, I had chanced upon A.A. Gill’s review, of some trendy eatery or other, replete with customary witticisms about the victuals and the somewhat unexpected topic of misogyny. I cannot recall the t...more Sitting inertly in the mid-afternoon sun, after a night of hellish revelry, I tried to shut out my companion’s comical cooing by losing myself in a book. I have been a little slack with my reading lately, thus needed a metaphorical kick up the posterior to propel me out of the lethargy. Earlier in the day, I had chanced upon A.A. Gill’s review, of some trendy eatery or other, replete with customary witticisms about the victuals and the somewhat unexpected topic of misogyny. I cannot recall the theoretical imperative which prompted Gill’s spiel but it got me thinking. There have been many writers throughout history accused of being less than favourable in their treatment of women, and more often than not Charles Bukowski has featured on the list. I personally don’t see it, but then perhaps I’m somewhat biased due to my unwavering love for the man. Inspired by the above thought, I picked up Notes of a Dirty Old Man and spent the remainder of Sunday devouring the collection of Bukowski’s newspaper columns for Open City, which by Bukowski’s own definition was, at the time, “the liveliest rag in the US”.

The “liveliest rag” in the land was a perfect match for the liveliest writer of his generation, who infiltrated the somniferous rodomontade of the literary world with his own brand of irreverent penmanship. The snapshots of Bukowski’s life, gathered in the book, cover a multitude of sins from “fucking up to, fucking out” from dying to live to living to die. Pondering the contentious topic of suicide Bukowski, says: “Suicide seems incomprehensible unless you yourself are thinking about it…I think it was in 1954 that I last tried suicide. I closed all the windows and turned on the oven and the gas jets…I stretched out on the bed. I went to sleep. It would have worked too, only inhaling the gas game me such a headache that the headache awakened me. I got up off the bed, laughing and saying to myself ‘You damned fool, you don’t want to kill yourself…some hangover, some column”. Some column, indeed. Unfortunately, there aren’t many columnists like Bukowski nowadays, fewer still labouring in the tenebrous brume of a hangover like some of their readers. It is a bit of a shame that modern day papers are filled with anesthetised and insular expositions about organic rhubarb compote, the dimensions of one’s carbon footprint, psychologically contented chickens and other suchlike middle-brow fixations. And, don’t even get me started on the credentials of the excerebrose scriveners and pseudo-intellectuals churning this bullocks out.

But, perhaps everyone is indeed entitled to their opinion like the doctors at the county general hospital who told Bukowski “one more drink and you’re dead”. That didn’t stop him, not for a long while. He continued living “surrounded by full and empty beer cans, writing poems, smoking cheap cigars…and waiting for the final wall to fall.” That didn’t happen for a while either, at least not before he got hitched – on a whim. She sent him gnathonic letters bewailing her impending fate as a spinster; Bukowski took pity and prompted by some eleemosynary instinct proposed. He remembers: “I met her at the bus station, that is I sat there drunk waiting for a woman I had never met, spoken to, to marry. I was insane. I didn’t belong on the streets.” Luckily, she turned out to be “a cute sexy blonde…all ass and bounce”. A quick round-trip to Vegas and the two were wed-locked and bound for her home town in some smoggy part of Texas. She was a millionaires and a self-confessed nymphomaniac, he “the city slicker who had hooked the rich girl,” with nothing but a “very tired cock and a suitcase full of poems.” Eventually, the two went back to LA to live in a dingy bedsit, Bukowski recollects, very candidly: “When we fucked the bed would shake the walls and the walls would shake the shelves, and then I’d hear it: the slow volcano sound of the shelves giving way and then I’d stop. ‘No, don’t stop, oh Jesus, don’t stop.’ And then I’d catch the stroke again and down the selves would come, down on my back and my ass and head and legs and arms and she’d laugh and scream and MAKE IT.” Unfortunately, being a nymphomaniac she would also “make it” with others. “Every man believes he can tame a nympho but it only leads to the grave,” in Bukowski’s case, however, it led to a divorce. She later remarried a fisherman, or as Bukowski put it: “I once lost a million dollars to a Japanese fisherman.” There’s always humour in Bukowski’s sadness, and an admirable resignation to take the knockbacks with a drink, because “the waste and the terror, the sadness and the failure, the stage play, the horseplay, falling down, getting up, pretending it’s ok, grinning, sobbing” is all part of the “grandiose romanticism” and politics of life.

In another column Bukowski relays meeting “[Jack] Kerouac’s boy Neal C[assidy] shortly before he went down to lay along those Mexican railroad tracks to die.” Neal was berserk like a girandole “jogging, bouncing, ogling” and singing like a cranky “cuckoo bird”. Bukowski recalls: “He never sat down. He kept moving around the floor. He was a little punchy with the action but there wasn’t any hatred in him.” There’s a sense of melancholy in Bukowski’s tone, and one gets the distinct impression that Neal was already too loaded on the “Eternal High” and too quick on the pedal in the drag race towards death. Upon hearing news of Neal’s passing, shortly after their first and only meeting, Bukowski turned his column into a eulogy for the last of the Beats, saying: “All those rides, all those pages of Kerouac, all that jail time” and for what? To “die alone under a frozen Mexican moon,” like his life meant nothing to anybody, not even himself. And yet, it did mean something, in part, thanks to the “dirty old man” who wrote about it in his column, and felt the loss. In Notes of a Dirty Old Man, Bukowski ploughs through a phantasmagoria of topics from the erosion of democracy to the aching of scraped knuckles, from psychotraumatic childhood memories to the “tragicomedy of fucking”, but always in a unique argot of a scuzzy rhymester and in a style entirely his own. Fucking features heavily throughout Bukowski’s work, but as he says: “I don’t write about it as an instrument of obsession. I write about it as a stage play laugh where you have to cry about it, a bit, between acts.” And he sticks to his word, crying and laughing intermittently in the subtext of every page while regaling the reader with some botched tryst with a whore and her interfering elephantine lesbian pimp. He does that, he cries and laughs, and then pours himself a drink before falling unconscious and letting the “world go by”. But not for long as there’s far too much loving, boozing, fighting and writing to do.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a bawdy, intense and candid book, diving into the ugly, the awkward, the tearfully funny and the heart-breaking without holding back. And one soon gets sucked into the frenzied coprolalia of Bukowski’s prose written with a recognisably dark sense of humour throughout. The collection offers a sublime insight into Bukowski’s psyche and the dizzying myriad twists of the writer’s life. Bukowski surmises it himself in the introduction by simply saying: “I am just an old guy with some dirty stories.” And he’s right, but he is also someone who writes about the “upside down, romantic, explosive things that seem to give chance to no chance,” and someone who loaded with an arsenal of beer cans and women power-drilled through minds and column inches affronting, offending and galling thin skinned Middle America because “sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.” (less)

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Aug 16, 2010 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories written by Bukowski for an LA newspaper is brutal, depraved and surprisingly readable. Like William Burroughs or Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski reveals the under belly of life: Self-destruction, prostitution, alley fights, bar fights, domestic violence, city filth and straight up bad luck. The stories are violent and many involve murder; they are fantastical yet depressingly realistic at the same time.

All of that said, I couldn't put it down and read it in an afte...more

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May 27, 2013 Ada rated it 4 of 5 stars

Unashamedly vulgar and crude entries by Bukowski, all in keeping with anything else you might have read by him or heard of him. Quite what is fact and fiction is at times hard to decipher but there is a distinctly auto-biographical element to this. Common themes, as expected, extend from casual misogyny and liberal sexual intercourse, to wayward and hapless contemporary American existence accompanied by an empty bottle of alcohol and frequent travels and jumping ship.

I like Bukowski though. It'...more

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Apr 29, 2011 Darkblob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poesie, biture, vomi, malbaise

Bon livre. Difficile à lire, un des seuls que j'ai abandonné une fois pour le reprendre plus tard. Pas tellement à cause du sujet, mais plutôt parce que la narration est particulière (d'autant qu'il y a une absence quasi-totale de ponctuation et de majuscules). Le bouquin est un enchainement de chroniques, de semblant de nouvelles et de morceaux de délire total. Mais ensuite bien sur, il reste aussi le personnage de Bukowski... Et là, aucune demi mesure, vous l'aimerez ou vous le détesterez, et...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Aria rated it 3 of 5 stars

Before purchasing this book, I was planning on buying another book by Bukowski, but unfortunately it was not in stock. I ended up finding Notes of a Dirty Old Man and decided to give it a shot. I didn't really know much about this specific book, but had heard a lot about Bukowski. Notes of a Dirty Old Man consist of short stories written by Bukowski for an LA newspaper. Each short story paints a gritty yet interesting picture in your mind. Prostitutes, bar fights, excessive use of alcohol/drugs,...more

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Nov 17, 2011 Marsha rated it 3 of 5 stars

This collection of short short stories and vignettes were originally published as a weekly column entitled “Notes of A Dirty Old Man” in the late 1960s in an underground Los Angeles paper called “Open City” founded by John Bryan, a former employee of The Herald-Examiner and L.A. Free Press.

Some of these stories are quite bizarre, but all have a general theme of sex, alcoholism, lack of ambition to get a good job or any job really, and lack of ambition to succeed. Some stories have the underlying...more This collection of short short stories and vignettes were originally published as a weekly column entitled “Notes of A Dirty Old Man” in the late 1960s in an underground Los Angeles paper called “Open City” founded by John Bryan, a former employee of The Herald-Examiner and L.A. Free Press.

Some of these stories are quite bizarre, but all have a general theme of sex, alcoholism, lack of ambition to get a good job or any job really, and lack of ambition to succeed. Some stories have the underlying theme of suicide. Some characters survive only for the lack of doing themselves in.
Although dark in subject manner, some of the stories are quite humorous with a subtle satire approach.

Bukowski’s writing was imaginative and unique. He was an openly admitted alcoholic and a chauvinist who looked at woman mainly as objects to have sex with. Yet he was also a very talented man who drew readers into his bizarre world with his very frank, and often perverse attitude about society.

He mixed fiction with truth. As an example, in one of his stories, which may or may not be fiction, he writes about his father beating him when he was young and living at home.

In another story, he wrote about a man who when drafted to war (Vietnam), instead of being concerned about living or dying, or any thoughts about war at all, was instead overly concerned that while he was away, he would miss having sex with his wife.

Bukowski wrote that most women are drawn to bad boys and idiots. They procreate with them and that is why society continues to become stupider and stupider. Good point!

There is an obsession with sex in Bukowski’s stories and after awhile it gets tiring reading them. The stories I liked most were those that were creative and bizarre, such as the man who woke up with purple polka dots on his skin. He went to the doctor and the doctor did not know what it was or how to help him. As an insurance agent, he did not know how he would be able to continue selling insurance looking as he did. So, he went ballistic and stood on top of a Los Angeles freeway pass and started shooting everyone, civilians and police. After this outburst, he noticed that his polka dots went away. The cops came to get him. He tried to surrender since he felt better that his skin cleared up, but the police were angry that he had killed two of their own so they shot him dead. End of story. Bukowski writes, “The traffic on the freeway was moving again, as usual.” Life goes on.

(less)

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Sep 29, 2012 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

A quick background on my exposure to Bukowski:

A number of years ago, I watched the Bukowski-scripted movie Barfly, starring Micky Rourke as Bukowski's alter-ego, Chinaski. It's a pretty good flick, which introduces the man's proclivity for drinking and fighting, as well as his exceptional talent for writing poetry and generally being character.

Much later I read "Women", which is a largely autobiographical novel that once again uses the Chinaski character to see the world through Bukowski's eyes....more A quick background on my exposure to Bukowski:

A number of years ago, I watched the Bukowski-scripted movie Barfly, starring Micky Rourke as Bukowski's alter-ego, Chinaski. It's a pretty good flick, which introduces the man's proclivity for drinking and fighting, as well as his exceptional talent for writing poetry and generally being character.

Much later I read "Women", which is a largely autobiographical novel that once again uses the Chinaski character to see the world through Bukowski's eyes. The man basically slummed it through large parts of his life, making money from writing when he could, but taking crap jobs to supplement his steady drinking habit. Though often poor and always rough-looking, Bukowski was never lacking for sex. He wasn't always very picky, but he usually imbues even the saddest sexual act with some small amount of beauty.

"Notes of a Dirty Old Man" is a collection of essays/short stories/musings that Bukowski wrote for an underground Los Angeles paper in the late 1960s, just before he reached enough acclaim to be a full-time professional writer. Being that his editor barely even checked what he was writing, it's a mixed bag. Some of the entries seem incomplete or just plain bizarre or nearly incoherent. Most, though, are interesting enough to entertain or provoke thought. There are several that I found exceptionally engaging, funny, and revelatory. While some are political or philosophical rants (which can be fun or can be disturbing), some of the best are when Bukowski gets the most personal. Anyone who's seen or heard Bukowski's rare public readings would be interested to know the background that formed the oddly monotone, thoroughly-jaded man of poetic genius.

There are also more than a few really hilarious short stories that range from sports tales to slice-of-down-and-out life that are very true to the spirit of the Beat Generation that preceded them.

I'll definitely pick up some more Bukowski in the future, but I have to portion it out. Though he can be highly amusing, entertaining, and insightful, his was a rather haggard life that sometimes wears me down to read about. This collection gives you a little bit of almost everything that was in the man's prose repetoir. A good, quick read for anyone interested.(less)

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Jan 24, 2009 Steve rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: no one really

Shelves: fiction

I was expecting something witty and intelligent, what I got was violent, crude, misogynistic and highly unpleasant, in the beginning at least. After a few tens of pages it settles down into a more, well mostly, stable narrative; almost like Bukowski wanted to put off the reader from delving further into the book. Beneath the vulgarity, self-loathing and woman hating, there is a glimmer of something. Perhaps it is, as the reviews on the back cover suggest, about the futility of life. It could be...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Anne Nikoline rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: strong Bukowski fans

Recommended to Anne Nikoline by: book club

Shelves: book-club, memoir, autobiography, read-in-2013

Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski is somewhat a autobiography of Bukowski himself but also his alter ego, Henry. This novel is mainly dealing with gabling, drinking and whoring which Bukowski is really good at, but what I find him to be even better at is his way with words and that does not show its true colours in this book.

I read for the prose when it comes to this author, so I was very disappointed to find a lack so enormous that I could hardly get through the book. Still, the wri...more

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Feb 11, 2009 M.L. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Of all the Bukowski prose (that I've read anyway), this seems the most immediate, least filtered, and purestly filthy. One can never be sure if his column for Open City was as easy to write as he claims ("sit down, crack open a beer, and let it go"), or that his work was as unedited. But there is something to the freedom of his writing before the weight of fame sets in, but after he's figured out that he can make a go of life somewhere besides a post office.

As a collection of columns, there's no...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Davide Socci rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Non saprei dire con certezza cosa non mi è piaciuto, né posso dire di non essermi mai ritrovato a sorridere tra me e me... ma non posso tacere quella sensazione liberatoria alla fine della lettura!
I racconti scorrono via veloci e anche divertenti, ma sembra che manchi qualcosa all'appello o, viceversa, che troppo sia stato messo sul piatto.
Probabilmente avevo troppe aspettative da questo libretto, probabilmente i racconti sconci non mi divertono o sorprendono abbastanza, probabilmente non avevo...more

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Mar 02, 2010 Ilana rated it 4 of 5 stars

I haven't read Bukowski since I was about 22 years old, and frankly was a little nervous that I'd find that I'd outgrown him since. But, I was in the mood for something masculine, and the new edition down at MLK struck my eye, so I checked it out.

I was pleasantly surprised! Bukowski seems less juvenile than I remembered, and less overtly sexist than the Beats who followed him. His musings on sports, sex, and getting older seemed strangely profound at times; I think the format of the book--3 or 4...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Elise rated it 3 of 5 stars

This one is not for the faint of heart, the delicate, nor the easily offended, but if you are bold, daring, and curious, it is somewhat entertaining. The rants, stories, and prose poems collected here are uneven in quality, but enough of them held my interest so that I was able to finish reading "Notes of a Dirty Old Man." Bukowski is so unflinchingly honest about everything, so don't read this if you can't handle the truth. He also exposes things some might wish they had never seen--prostitutio...more This one is not for the faint of heart, the delicate, nor the easily offended, but if you are bold, daring, and curious, it is somewhat entertaining. The rants, stories, and prose poems collected here are uneven in quality, but enough of them held my interest so that I was able to finish reading "Notes of a Dirty Old Man." Bukowski is so unflinchingly honest about everything, so don't read this if you can't handle the truth. He also exposes things some might wish they had never seen--prostitution, murder, abuse, rape, suicide, suicide by alcoholism, even necrophilia. At times, I found the collection sophomoric, as though he were daring me to read on, and read on I did. While some of the stories successfully disturbed, there were also some priceless nuggets of wisdom in these pages about the futility of revolution and in this Socratic exchange, about how this world makes us all mad:

"you say you often feel this madness, what do you do when it comes upon you?"

"I write poetry."

"is poetry madness?"

"non-poetry is madness."

"what is madness?"

"madness is ugliness" (178).

And ugliness is a fact of life, as "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" shows, page after page, but I still couldn't stop reading, because in the end, every story leads to the same place, and this is it:

"man, I'd like to see a good pair of shoes on every man walking the streets and see that he gets a good piece of ass and a bellyfull of food too. Christ, the last piece of ass I've had was in 1966 and I've been jacking off ever since. and there just ain't no jackoff compared to that wonder hole" (69).

And indeed, the conflict that drives this book is the search to get laid by a woman (and for the next drink, but he never seems to be without that because drink is so much easier to acquire). So, all this time, I saw Bukowski as a misogynist, when in fact he is entranced by the power of the feminine, the great "wonder hole," or should I say "wonder whole" because it's only when he is getting laid or writing that he is somewhat at peace, whole, just like every other angry, frustrated male writer from Herman Melville to D.H. Lawrence, to J.R.R. Tolkien. One man's elusive white whale or magic ring is another man's coveted "wonder hole." In fact, I'm feeling pretty empowered as a woman after reading this. Seriously, though, the misogyny of the other Beat writers of his time makes Bukowski look like a pussycat (no pun intended). (less)

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Jul 22, 2010 Barrett Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not really a novel, though the cover can be misleading. Just a compilation of articles that Bukowski did for a hip LA magazine, after he was famous. Some high points include him making fun of Kerouac and other famous people as he meets them, but by no means is this one of his greatest works. Maybe best for bus reading as each story is self-contained, short, an mostly unrelated to the rest.

I've read this before, drunk, and reading it sober makes all the difference in the world. Besides noticing h...more

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Jan 25, 2009 Cj rated it 5 of 5 stars

Notes on a dirty old man are some of the funniest, sadist, and mesmerizing stories. Bukowski told it like it was. If he was banging a chick he would tell you everything about. If she was ugly. He would tell you about. In his writing he never feels the need to hide behind anything. To give you a reason why he is doing it. If for example he was horny he was going to bang the fat chick and watch his bead posts break.

With a lot of these stories when you get to the last or soon to be last sentence h...more

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Jan 28, 2010 Derek added it

I worked at a bookstore that had shelf talkers; small reviews of books we'd recommend. I can remember thinking I'd like to have a "shit talker" for some books so people would NOT buy them. This is my attempt at a shit talker for this book. This book was so bad I had to leave its rating at zero stars. I am amazed that anyone would rave about this book or anything else by this guy.

His ramblings about his deplorable life and circumstances are so pathetic that some sound as if they're forced and com...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Travis Roberson rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the lowest I've ever rated a Bukowski book.

I think Bukowski says it best in the beginning, during his time writing for Open City, the paper was so busy that the editor often accepted Bukowski's pieces without second glance, more than likely due to his recent brush with success. If this book has taught me anything it's that editors are there for a reason. I'm no stranger to Bukowski, but this collection is just awful. The stories either go absolutely nowhere or break off into some half-as...more

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Feb 06, 2008 Thiago rated it 2 of 5 stars

Bukowski tem que ser lido. Não tanto pelo que ele tem a dizer, mas muito mais pelo jeito que ele diz. O estilo de escrita dele é legal demais. Mais do que usar bem as palavras, ele usa bem as frases. Escreve telegraficamente. Frase ponto, frase ponto. Muito bom mesmo.

A escrotidão dele é a outra parte do charme, que rende boas risadas. Ele faz o tipão "machão-canastra-féla-da-puta-bêbado", mas dá pra perceber que debaixo disso tudo tem um coração. Nesse livro, lembro que tem até uma crônica sobre...more

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Aug 30, 2008 Tony Cohen rated it 3 of 5 stars

What a great book this was. Note, I have to use the past tense here, only because I lack the ability to appreciate the origins of a genre that have been subsequently done to death by the time I got around to reading the original.

In terms of a debaucheristics romp it is bacchanal, and it must have been so shocking and visionary at the time, but that punch and fervor is gone, stolen by Brett Easten Ellison brilliantly and many others to boot, in my never very humble opinion. I honestly have to sa...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Becca Loo added it

i read this first and now i think maybe i shouldntve (can i do that?), becasue i'm now reading post office and he expanded on some of the articles in here so i feel like i've cheated and saw the preview to his life. anyway, i like him, he's simple and very very dirty, which i've slowly come to realize is what i must like because i keep reading these types of books. it was a perfect read during the school year because i didnt have to spend much time on any one story. if youre only gonna read one...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Karky rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had a Chuck Bukowski kick back in 2004. I moved out of my father's house the year prior, inadvertently isolated myself from most of my friends, got a soul-draining job in retail, and fallen into a bit of depression (which hardly anyone noticed). Though I hardly remember what I read, it spoke to me because I was in a toxic environment and Bukowski wrote with an honest intensity that was lacking in my life at the time.

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Apr 02, 2011 Luis Perez rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd actually like to give this closer to 4 stars, but not quite 4 stars. C'mon Goodreads, how about a 10-star system? Things would be a lot more accurate that way.

In any case, this collection of alternative newspaper columns isn't Bukowski's best work as a whole, but is still enjoyable to read. It's brilliant at times and muddy in others. I guess in that case, it's a lot like life.

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Mar 30, 2011 Michael White rated it 5 of 5 stars

Not a book for the faint of heart but ideal for the deviantly curious. The book is a collection of articles Charles Bukowski retreived from Essex House in the Open City newspapers. He wrote articles and they were published without censorship, he leaves nothing out from his life's story. Alcoholism, prostitution and murder (plus much more) is explored. Each article is extremely well written.

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Dec 20, 2008 Mark LaMountain rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not bad, lotsa drunken Bukowski ramblins...I picked this up as the second book of his writings I tried to take a run at, but it would've been better later on I think when I knew him better. But from what I remember it's him writing a bunch of columns in some magazine and he takes on his usual Bukowski tone and relates some crazy stories and ideas, probably wasted the entire time he wrote anything in here and it shows in a good way :)

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About Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany on August 16, 1920, the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, then left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of publishing success at this time caused him to g...more

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Quotes from Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“the soul has no skin; the soul only has insides that want to sing, finally, can't you hear it, brothers? softly, can't you hear it, brothers? a hot piece of ass and a new Cadillac ain't going to solve a god-damned thing.” — 27 people liked it

“There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.” — 22 people liked it

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