Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 [Hardcover]

Charles Bukowski (Author), David Calonne (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994), one of the most outrageous and controversial figures of twentieth-century American literature, was so prolific that many important pieces were never collected during his lifetime. Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is a substantial selection of these wide-ranging works, most of which have been unavailable since their original appearance in underground newspapers, literary journals, and even porn magazines. Among the highlights are Bukowski’s first published short story, “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip”; his last short story, “The Other”; his first and last essays; and the first installment of his famous “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” column.

The book contains meditations on his familiar themes (drinking, horse-racing, etc.) as well as singular discussions of such figures as Artaud, Pound, and the Rolling Stones. Other significant works include the experimental title piece; a fictionalized account of meeting his hero, John Fante (“I Meet the Master”); an unflinching review of Hemingway (“An Old Drunk Who Ran Out of Luck”); the intense, autobiographical “Dirty Old Man Confesses”; and several discussions of his aesthetics (“A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack [Tall],” “In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die,” and “Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way”). What is ultimately revealed is an unexpectedly learned mind behind his seemingly off hand productions.

Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is essential reading for Bukowski fans, as well as a good introduction for new readers of this innovative, unconventional writer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Finally...David Calonne has unearthed Portions...the previously missing link in Bukowski's oeuvre that suddenly makes everything come clear." -- John Martin, Black Sparrow Press

"He [Bukowski] wrote American. When it meant something good. Fucked up, male, but incredibly true. In a distinct rhythm." -- Eileen Myles, author of Sorry, Tree and Cool for You

"Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is as vivid, bad-ass, screamingly funny, and gutter-angelic as the man himself." -- Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight, Perv, Plainclothes Naked, and I, Fatty.

"Via short stories and nonfiction--introductions to the work of other writers, book reviews, and autobiographical accounts--the reader is taken on a roller-coaster ride through the waxing and waning lucidity and sometimes depravity of Bukowski's trademark topics (perhaps obsessions): sex, drinking, writing, and self-deprecating. . . . Bukowski also documents the most private moments of his life, seemingly giving society what it wants." --Library Journal

"The newly released 'Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook' pulls together as-yet uncollected essays and stories by Charles Bukowski, written from 1944-1990. Some were published in places like 'Rolling Stone'; others showed up in fleeting literary journals and porn mags. The selections include the first of his 'Notes From a Dirty Old Man,' a series that appeared in multiple magazines, and the first short story he published, which pointed out his lack of prior publication: 'Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip.'" --Los Angeles Times' "Jacket Copy" Blog

"This is a valuable addition to the expanding, some might say morbidly obese, bulk of posthumous Bukowski titles. It's not just another agglomeration of odds and soda, unfinished drafts, and scraps that weren't good enough to publish the first time around, flaws that characterized his recent output and which even his most fervent acolytes must realize. No, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is a different animal. . . . This collection is also unique in that it offers a glimpse of Bukowski as nonfiction writer. . . . Most of his work, in fact, occupies a murky uncertain terrain, a lawless border town where poetry, fiction, and memoir meet for a light lunch. In some of these essays, we meet a writer of criticism and manifestos, reminding us that Bukowski was never simply a primitive naif but rather a disciplined, self-aware, thoughtful, and widely read artisan. It took a lot of hard work to make it seem otherwise." -- Andrew Madigan, The Bloomsbury Review --The Bloomsbury Review

Review

"He [Bukowski] wrote American. When it meant something good. Fucked up, male, but incredibly true. In a distinct rhythm."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864960
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864962
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,582,990 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

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Fanatics Only, September 8, 2008

By 

A. Woodley "A Stooge" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 (Uncollected Stories/Essays 1) (Paperback)

This isn't for a beginner or a casual fan of Bukowski. If your like me though and have read everything you can by Bukowski and want more, than this is your next step. This book is a nice collection of Bukowski stories that for one reason or another haven't made mass circulation. Many of these stories are being reprented here for the first time since their appearnce in some long ago forgotten magazine. All the boozing, betting, and women you love from Bukowski are packed in along with some fascinating literary critisim (showing that their was more to Bukowski than the boozing, betting, and women). There are some lost gems in here. With that being said, it is also important to note that some of these works aren't Bukowski's best. But hell, a mediocre Bukowski story is still way above par than a good story from any other writer out there.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a gulp of fresh air, March 20, 2010

By 

Alexander Ivakhnenko (Chicago, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 (Uncollected Stories/Essays 1) (Paperback)

Charles Bukowski works the form like a tangible material. Like a talented carpenter, he crafts his short story, first looking at it from inside, checking it for truth, realism and message and then he writes it and when you read it, every word fits in like a well-set mortise joint, crafted well, true, real.
Amidst incessantly cheap, dumb, stupid and shallow slew of publications this recent short story compilation by Charles Bukowski shows that there is always a true direction in life. Always was. Always is, and when you want, you will find it and will keep on following it, without living like a dull fish swallowing dry crap, fashioned like an edible meal, thrown by the society in the human fish tank.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excerpt from my Pop Matters review to run 11/10/08, October 26, 2008

By 

Rodger D. Jacobs "Carver's Dog" (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 (Uncollected Stories/Essays 1) (Paperback)

"I have created the eternal drunk image somewhere in my work," Bukowski laments in "Notes of a Dirty Old Man", "and there is a minor reality behind it. Yet, I feel that my work has said other things. But only the eternal drunk seems to come through."

In "Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook", the most important contribution to Bukowski studies to date, the image of the eternal drunk may not be exactly laid to rest but a new blood-swollen, multi-dimensional creature arises from these pages, a sensitive, tortured, "vulnerable man of genius trapped in a small room with a typewriter", a fiery provocateur for social change, a profoundly serious producer and defender of poetry, a passionate spokesman for "the defeated but still hopeful" dwelling in the lower depths of America (though he would never claim to speak for anyone but himself), an intense lover of classical music and the possessed madmen who created it, and a keen-eyed, hard-bitten naturalist essaying the hardscrabble existence of a writer ("The life of a writer is unbearable ... starving writers live worse than skid row bums") and the harsh desperation of life on the margins of Los Angeles. Charles Bukowski believed that pride "has no right in things upright and mechanical", that primal feeling trumped intellect in any race of the body or mind, and that a thousand scarlet sunsets bleeding into the Pacific Ocean were no match for a woman's beauty.

But beauty, Bukowski instructs, "would not be beautiful without flaws."