Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (Hardcover)

by Charles Bukowski (Author), Seamus Cooney (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This wonderful collection of letters chronicles Bukowski's life from his first days as a poet having meager success through his resignation from his postal job to pursue writing as his sole source of income. In between, the letters reveal in raw and uncensored fashion how a hard-drinking, hard-living man followed his own vision of poetic truth and artistic integrity. Earlier letters are written to the few editors, poets and admirers who had become aware of Bukowski's wild poetry. In them, we see the 40-year-old author struggling to make ends meet through an alcoholic stupor of which he is neither ashamed nor apologetic. We read of his thrill as his first book appears-- directly in the aftermath of the assassination of JFK. Even as his fame grows and his friends are convinced that he has made it, Bukowski remains in ill health and financial insecurity. The honesty, humor and lack of pretension in these letters make them a must for Bukowski fans and an engaging read for anyone interested in literary lives. Reproductions of letters and an afterword by Cooney round out the volume nicely.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist
Here we witness the angry, boozing, brooding, bitter poet, still unable to quit his day job, hustling his work. But he also appears inspired and hard-edged, drawing strength from his raw self-expression, his uncompromising stance as the ultimate outsider, his relentless rage, and his ability to survive in spite of himself. These letters from 1960 through 1970 reveal Bukowski in his glory--toothaches, hangovers, hemorrhoids, and all--as a manic-depressive for all seasons. His persona, so closely linked to his pathology, is as apparent in his correspondence as in his poetry and fiction, making these selected letters ideal for Bukowskiphiles. One wonders, however, just how many others will delve into this stuff. Bukowski is perversely intriguing, attracting the kind of attention one usually reserves for grisly train wrecks. Stay tuned--this is only the first volume. Benjamin Segedin

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 372 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Books (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876859155
• ISBN-13: 978-0876859155
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,996,492 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Screamstream., January 2, 2006

By	Critical Reader (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Screams from the Balcony (Paperback)

This truly is a great book, a must for Bukowski fans and a book to which I have found myself returning many times over the years. It starts off very sedate in the 60s, with a meek Bukowski writing well-mannered letters to people from small presses, but he gathers in steam and anger as the book goes along until by halfway through he is writing endless drunken stream-of-consciousness scream-of-semiconsciousness ramblerants to all and sundry, using his typewriter as a machinegun to fire syllabic bullets and howl from his cage and keep a small part of himself alive.

The uncensored inebriated letters he composes are brilliant, funny and poignant and erudite and poetic and stupid and depressing in turns, and he unfailingly tells the truth, no matter what the subject under discussion. His prized loner status is somewhat undermined by the sheer volume of mail he sends, a deeply shy man for whom correspondence is obviously extremely important, his way of communicating with the world and staying relatively sane. But his letters are never aloof or self-conscious, pouring out of the man without being labored over or pretentious.

Seeing reproductions of his artistic letters, full of spelling errors and covered in doodlings of his, is illuminating too. What ultimately comes out of this excellent volume, and the two following it, Living On Luck and Reach For The Sun, is a portrait of a man who simply HAS to write or he will explode. He veers close to suicide in places, as evidenced in grim letters to Sherri Martinelli (a volume of letters to her, Beerspit Night And Cursing, has also been published, and displays a cultured side of Bukowski rarely shown to male correspondents) but by the end of the volume he has quit the post office and is ready to take on the wordwork world. And the rest is history. This is a great book and I would highly recommend it to anybody. The End.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sheri Martinelli Years, July 26, 2004

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Screams from the Balcony (Paperback)

Bukowski's letters of the 1960s are filled with the passion and energy of the time. It was an age of rebellion and recklessness, and in this period Bukowski's own writing really came of age; you can feel the confidence growing in page after page. His friends were legion, and so many of them seemed to have kept his letters you sense that even then, they knew they were holding on to something special, even if mass fame wouldn't come to CB for another decade or more.

During the time Bukowski was also writing numerous letters to the Beat poet Sheri Martinelli, who had also been the long distance muse to Ezra Pound when he was locked away safely in St Elizabeth's in Washington DC. Both sides of their correspondence have been published and are worth looking into, because how often are we privy to the intimate exchanges of a pair of genius minds?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing..., August 2, 2004

By	jeroldh "jeroldh" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Screams from the Balcony (Paperback)

I didn't think I'd find another Buk. I liked as much as 'Notes' & 'Love is a Dog', but the unadulterated, excerpted rants in this volume give such a great view, that's just THAT much more pure than his 'fiction'. It's awesome to see story ideas & themes from his other books coming forward in his mind as his friends & colleagues encourage him to write novels. This is the first book of Buk. letters I've gotten, so I can't offer comparisions, but I'll definitely be getting more. Love it.