Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 19441990 (Paperback)

by Charles Bukowski (Author), David Calonne (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...at his most lucid and powerful when he explores the process of writing ... a welcome addition to Bukowski's growing library." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is mightily essential reading for all Bukowski fans, old and new." --Beat Scene 56 (Summer 2008)

Review
"Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is mightily essential reading for all Bukowski fans, old and new."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864928
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864924
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57,872 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 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 (REAL NAME)

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 7 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 (REAL NAME)

"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."

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great reading, October 9, 2008

By	A. Wolin (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bukowski is one of my favorite writers ... this book is a terrific compilation of short readings.