PULP [Paperback]

Bukowski C (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 1994

Bukowski's final novel is a slightly surreal pastiche of the classic Mickey Spillane, Chandleresque private dick novel. Nick Belane, is a lonely, middle-aged, egotistical, alcoholic private detective who is badly in need of some lucrative work, but what he gets is a series of increasingly strange assignments from a bizarre collection of clients. He is asked to track down the long-dead French classical author Celine and an elusive red sparrow. He encounters aliens, heavies and even lady Death herself along the way. All the while Belane is convincing himself that he's still a white-hot detective and that nobody can take him for a ride, or indeed make him feel he's losing his mind. Boozing heavily and trying to avoid getting beaten up in every bar along the way, he finally reaches the conclusion that he's washed up. Bukowski's deliberately overdone writing takes us on a fantastical ride through the dark corners and dodgy dealings of Belane's film-noir world with guns, broads and heavyset thugs. A great demonstration of Bukowski's imaginative talents.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Always the iconoclast striving for a kind of literary raunch, the internationally acclaimed Bukowski ( Ham on Rye ), who died recently, leaves us with this spoof of the hardboiled detective genre, featuring an L.A.-based private investigator named Nick Belane. As the title makes clear, this novel is dedicated to bad writing, and readers who choose to ignore this warning and plunge ahead will soon know why. A spoof should be funnier and sharper than what it is spoofing but, compared to Hammett and Chandler, Pulp is quite simply trash. In the opening pages, Belane is paid a visit by a lady in red named Lady Death, who turns out to be death itself looking for the French author Celine, who should have died a long time ago but hasn't. Belane's search for Celine leads him to some space aliens who have assumed human shape, and to some juvenile encounters with an unhappily married couple. Along the way, every woman he meets is a dish, and every man is a dumb thug. In every bar he visits, Belane is mistaken for somebody else, a mistake which invariably erupts in a murderous brawl. The prose is practically nonexistent, and you can forget character. All that's left is humor and philosophy, but Belane's humor is all bathroom and his philosophy can be summed up in the lines, "I wasn't dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay. Who wasn't?" Bukowski has taken the worst of the PI genre, stripped it bare, and added nothing but a dose of adolescent posturing. It's sad thatBukowski has left as his parting gesture a book so weak and thin.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

This is a darkly humorous takeoff of private eye novels, replete with the recently deceased Bukowski's usual scatalogical unpleasantries. Nick Belane, a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed Los Angeles detective who charges $6 per hour, is swatting flies in his office when in walks a "glorious dizziness of flesh" who introduces herself as Lady Death. She wants Belane to verify that a man she spotted in a bookstore is the long-dead writer Celine. The "real Celine," she says, "not just some half-assed wannabe. There are too many of those." He accepts the job, which, of course, takes him to every gin mill in the city. He's also hired to locate something called the Red Sparrow, to tail a cheating wife, and to investigate a voluptuous space alien named Jeannie Nitro who's been harassing a wimpy mortician and occupying his customers. All four cases, of course, dovetail into an existential nightmare. There are some truly funny moments, but many will find Bukowski's raw, ugly side repulsive and his negativity unbearable. Recommended for large literature collections.
Ron Antonucci, Hudson Lib. & Historical Society, Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1ST edition (November 17, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876859279
• ISBN-13: 978-0876859278
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,022,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars allegory of death, January 12, 2005

By 

Nicola Terrenato (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pulp (Paperback)

Written as he was fighting the illness that would kill him, this is Bukowski's farewell to his readers. As he said elsewhere of his hero Céline, "they ripped his guts out and he made them laugh". And this is what he proceeds to to in Pulp. Portraying himself as a blundering, idiotic detective, he pokes the ultimate fun at his own work as a writer. He hasn't even begun to solve any of the mysteries of life and yet he is about to die a meaningless death (in the allegory, the lease on his office is expiring), surrounded by even worse clowns and failures than he is. Personifications of his earlier selves are also there (the gambling addict mailman, see Post Office) and he resolutely thrashes them in the most poignant self-critique you'll ever find anywhere. Believe it or not, this book is a sublime act of bravery in the face of insurmountable odds.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worst Buk is better than Best of Some, December 17, 2006

By 

Oliver Peterson (Sag Harbor, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pulp (Paperback)

I'm slightly hesitant to give this three stars instead of two, but Bukowski is one of my all time favorites so I'll give him a break in case he's reading this from beyond the grave. Pulp is the last of Bukowski's short list of novels (in comparison to how many books he's published). It also happens to be his worst (in my humble opinion) book, period. I must say I appreciate his divergence from his usual, Henry Chinaski autobiographical stuff, but this one falls short. The main character is a private dick who gets involved with the spirit of Celine and a sexy alien in this offbeat story that, as the title suggests, plays with Pulp and Noir style. It's a quick, sort of fun read, but it feels thrown together and published on the merit and fame of its author rather than the quality of the book. Pulp kind of reminds me of a bad novel written by a young writer that doesn't realize his lack of talent. Still, it's a must for any Bukowski fan because of how different it is and because he only has a handful of novels. I'm on my way to finishing everything Buk has ever written and this is just another piece of the fantastic whole. If you've never read Bukowski please don't start with this. It's not fair to him. Check out Women or Post Office. If you're a dedicated fan you'll get a kick out of Pulp but will likely agree that it's more a quirky, fun change and another addition to his lexicon than a great work of fiction. That's the best way I can describe it. You can find a synopsis somewhere else.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bukowski lives up to the hype, December 18, 2002

By 

Arilitt "Chris Skabla" (bensalem, pa USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pulp (Paperback)

I first heard of Charles Bukowski when i was reading a news update on the band Shiner's website and it made me curious. Then i was at a Dismemberment Plan concert and someone in one of the opening acts had a Charles Bukowski T-shirt on. If an author has people wearing T-shirts with his likeness on them he must be good. Right?
Pulp is a funny and vulgar parody of Pulp mystery novels, and revolves around Nick Belane a Private Detective in Hollywood. The book follows his misadventures that include working for Lady Death, a space alien called jeannie nitro, hunting for the famous French author Celine (who is suppose to be dead), looking for a red sparrow, and lots of drinking. In Pulp Bukowski mixes the pulp novel, hopelessness, lonelyness, and extreme vulgarity and somehow makes it funny. His writing style is very character centered and is very dialog oriented. The story and even plot seemed to take a backseat. However Pulp is not for everyone. It's funny, but it's humor is dark, and it is very very vulgar. I can't stress that last part enough. This book is vulgar, so if you get easily offended don't buy it. Otherwise this book is very easy and funny read.