Customer Reviews

Horses Don't Bet on People and Neither Do I

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Charles Bukowski, Horses Don't Bet on People and Neither Do I (Wormwood Review, 1984)

Another of Buk's Wormwood Review special editions; in other words, it's actually an issue of the Wormwood Review in which everything was written by Bukowski. Given how difficult this is to find these days, it's well worth noting that if you've read Buk extensively, you've probably encountered most (if not all) of this material before, most of it in War All the Time. However, that doesn't mean that if some absent-minded used book seller has just popped a copy of it on the shelf with a five dollar price tag, you shouldn't grab it, clutch it to your breast, and start muttering about your precious.

I've long been of the opinion that Buk's engine started misfiring more often than it fired roundabout the mid-eighties, and this collection does tend to substantiate that; there are some pieces here that still show glimmers of the fire that made him a sensation in the sixties, but there's also a good deal of material that most of us would have sent into the fireplace without a second thought. The good, though, definitely outweighs the bad in this one. *** ½