Customer Reviews

The Hunchback of East Hollywood: A Biography of Charles Bukowski

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With the essential parts of Bukowskis biography covered (first & best) by the man himself, then by Cherkovski and Sounes, there seems little of note left to write of. Well, that's what this surely is...little of note.
This is a "me too!" kind of book with plenty of Malones own personality coming through and no new information. Not what I look for in a biography, especially when some basic details are either skimmed over or completely left out.
As mentioned, the Sounes book is comprehensive and engaging, with the Cherkovski serving some purpose. Even Richmond, Winans and Long had something new to say and found interesting ways in which to say them, although their books don't pretend to be comprehensive biographies.
I've read them all and will continue to read whatever I can on this writer. It's just a shame so much of it is dross.
If you are looking for a great book on Bukowski see Brewers bio/crit. It covers (well) the most essential thing about Bukowski...his written words. Most of the rest is just fluff.

Another guy who didn't know Bukowski trying to make a quick buck off his corpse. Too bad. A waste of money. Read Bukowski instead. Also, the print is so small you'll need a magnifying glass. Thumbs down. This is the worst of the lot.

Has a wealth of information on the man behind the myth, but unfortunately the author chose to use far too many similies and metaphors to hammer home certain ideas. Other bios are a better bet. I found myself skimming and skipping through the book as I couldn't stand some of the writing...

not that it's poorly written, it's just that there is nothing new about Buk here and other tomes by Howard Sounes and Daniel Weizman make for more interesting reading. It seems Aubrey Malone read all of Buk's books and decided to write about the great writer...no crime there, to be sure, but it does not make for interesting reading at all. A.D. Wynans (a former postal worker himself, as Buk was) actually knew Bukowski & I wonder if his take on the mad boozer of East Hollywood might have more punch.

Written in the swollen purple diction of a precocious English schoolboy it's hard to imagine a less appropriate take on Bukowski's life and work. Unreadable.

I muddled through the first few pages and then skipped around at random in the hope that something was there. I hit immediately upon this howler of a paragraph which manages both a misreading and biographical error in just six lines of pukey prose:

"Years ago he had written in a poem that it was better to be chauffeured round in a car than to own one, but now he was revising that view. Or was he? Just because you were in a stable didn't make you a horse. The trappings of success didn't have to become traps. Maybe he was just having a lark. It was the same Hank who didn't want to go to war or save the whale who needed to be showy about his wealth, but he drew the line at getting a jacuzzi. Jane would surely have turned in her grave at that."

The use of the word "chauffeured" in paraphrasing "The Red Porsche" is grating--it does not appear in the poem and I doubt it appears anywhere in Bukowski's oeuvre. It's a misleading word in this case and leads to an inaccurate characterization. The type of car and circumstance in which the action takes place (a rich cultured lady is driving him around) yield a very specific meaning (specificity being the essence of Bukowski's power). But to suggest that Bukowski generally preferred being a passenger to driving is ridiculous, as his dozens of poems about driving make plain.

As to the Jacuzzi: he had one. He wrote poems about it. There's an illustration by R. Crumb of Buk sitting in it.

If I hadn't taken this book out of the library I would have thrown it across the room in disgust. It appears to be nothing more than a cynical attempt to cash in on the Bukowski name. It is full of false generalizations, amateur psychologizing, and self-conscious cleverness. There oughtta be a law against this kind of thing. It's tantamount to graverobbing.

All right, Malone, take your filthy money and get out of here.

Not only a bad biography of Bukowski but a bad biography. Poorly written (riddled with cliches that I can only imagine would have had Bukowski howling), massively padded-out with the author's often unfounded assertions and conclusions rather than critical synthesis. More irritating, the author often attributes motives, thoughts, opinions to the subject with no basis (or at least no explanation of the basis) in fact. I disagree with one reviewer who asserts that this is a bad bio because the author did not know Bukowski. This criterion would disqualify a mass of great critical biographies of literary figures. However, if you have have read even a handful of Bukowski's books and some of the excellent collections of his letters you already have a better understanding of his life and his work than this. No index, no bibliography, no list of Bukowski's published work. There has got to be college freshman year term papers on Bukowski out there better than this.

I've read the big bio and it was very good. Cherkovski really liked Buk and Malone does too. His new bio, while it has very little new in it as far as facts are concerned, has Malone and that's new! There are some passages near the end that rival Bukowski himself. Malone is a fine prose poet.
The one thing that bothers me about all the material by and about Bukowski, and that includes this book, is that they don't show the normal every day relationship between Buk and his parents, between Buk and his girls, between Buk and his friends. You can't be used and abused all the time. People go crazy but they don't stay there. One time Mr. Bukowski put his son into a special class. And one must always remember that the very existence of children are a reminder of their parents mortality and that can drive anyone a little over the edge.
If you are interested in Bukowski read this book.