South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life [Paperback]

Charles Bukowski (Author), Richard Robinson (Photographer)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press (1988)
• ASIN: B000KVPUQI
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,532,917 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

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Buried Life, August 7, 2004

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life (Paperback)

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) had a gift for creating evocative titles. The title of this book, "South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life" (1975) captures hauntingly the sense of loneliness, alienation, and aloneness that underlies the 27 short stories in this volume.

Bukowski began writing short stories at an early age while he supported himself doing odd jobs and through work at the Post Office. He then turned to poetry and, eventually, to writing novels at the urging of John Martin of Black Sparrow Press. Bukowski continued to write stories and columns for underground newspapers in Los Angeles. Some of the stories are included here.

As are the novels, Bukowski's stories are raw and gritty. They are filled with life in Los Angeles flophouses and cheap rooming houses. The stories feature chronic alcoholism, crude sexuality, sexual frustration, horseplaying, violence, and joblessness. They are a chronicle of the life of the down-and-outer.

Many of the stories are told in the voice of Henry Chinaski, the autobiographical character that is at the center of Bukowski's novels. But interestingly, some of the stories in this collection feature other characters and settings. The collection includes, for example a fanciful story set in the old West, "Stop Staring ... Mister", and stories with imaginative, if macabre themes, including "No way to Paradise", "Maja Thurup" and "The Devil was Hot".

The dominant impression these stories convey is one of loneliness and isolation. Whether the character is Chinaski or another individual, Bukowski writes of individuals who lack social connectedness and sense of purpose. His characters are perpetual outsiders who mock a world they cannot share and simultaneously tear themselves apart. Dostoevsky's Underground Man is a distant cousin of most of the characters we meet in Bukowski's stories. Another book that I find similar in tone, set in New York City rather than the west coast is Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" which shares much of the grimness, loneliness, sexual obsession, and search for love that I find in Bukowski.

Some of the works included in this collection are more vignettes than short stories. There is little in the way of development and in some cases the climax of the story is nonexistent or misfires. There are interesting settings, however, in many of these stories and as sketches many of them work well.

The stories that exemplify the theme of loneliness for me include the first one in the collection, titled "Loneliness" and the story "Remember Pearl Harbor?" which tells of Chinaski's rejection for military service in WW II. These stories are good at sketching the nature of the rootless, lonely individual. Some of the other stories in this collection that I thought good are "Bop Bop against that Curtain", "Christ on Rollerskates", "Hit Man", "Pittsburgh Phil & Co" (a fine story about gambling at the racetrack) and "Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts."

Bukowski writes simply with short sentences in a style filled with explecatives and references to sexual and excrecatory functions. I became interested in Bukowski's writings several years ago, put them aside, and then reread some of them after viewing an excellent film on Bukowski's life: "Bukowski: Born into This". Bukowski is hardly a writer for all times and all seasons. But there is a toughness and raw humor in these books, and a sense of loss and sadness that make Bukowski's books highly evocative of certain kinds of blue and lonely feelings. The stories are metaphors of a buried life than many people see in themeselves at times in somewhat different ways than the ways presented in Bukowski's writings. That is why, I think, Bukowski continues to have a following and to be read.

Robin Friedman

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Early, Great Collection - MUST HAVE!, July 2, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life (Paperback)

SOUTH OF NO NORTH by Charles Bukowski, is a GREAT collection of short stories, including many of his early published chapbooks, many of which lay the groundwork for his novels like POST OFFICE. Bukowski started writing short stories twenty years before he hit the poetry -- the bottle was in between and, seemingly, forever -- and his stories are haunting, often surreal, the way Robert Crumb's comics are unique, even disturbing. You will find where he started, in stories that include glimpses into his "lost" years when he was a drifting worker and bum. When he works in the desert carrying railroad ties, you feel the slivers in his gloveless hands, and you feel what it may have been that drove him to all the rest. SOUTH OF NO NORTH is his early best work. If you like Buk, definitely pick of this copy to keep near your favorite Buk novels like POST OFFICE, WOMEN, FACTOTUM. Along with this collection, I must recommend another Amazon quick-pick, THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez, obviously influenced by the great, one-of-a-kind Bukowski.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Introduction to Bukowski's Work, March 17, 2003

By 

Ros Saciuk (In the heart of rattlesnake gulch, in the dust covered expanse of the great Mojave desert) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: South of No North: Stories of the Buried Life (Paperback)

Charles Bukowskis work is fixated upon the underbelly of society, where the unctuous underachieving degenerate is glorified, low-life living is made normal, and alcoholism and crime not only flourish but are revered.

In his short story GUTS Bukowski describes what is the ubiquitous theme common to all of his work: Ive always admired the villain, the outlaw, the [SOB]. I dont like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken waysI also like vile women, drunk cursing [bs] with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces. Im more interested in perverts than Saints. I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I dont like laws, morals, religions, rules. I dont like to be shaped by society.

Unfortunately, many readers have difficulty looking past this admission, and find him unnecessarily offensive, dismissing him as a drunken vulgarion with a typewriter.

Its too bad that Bukowski was obsessed with X rated themes and language, because he wrote in a style that read fast and easy, is entertaining, and could have been accessible to a very wide audience had he chosen a lighter subject.

Despite all this, I cannot honestly say that I dislike his work. I fact, I find his work to be page after page of comedy and, quite frankly, liberating from the structures and confines of everyday life. Yet, at the same time, although I often find myself describing Bukowskis work as: crude, offensive, juvenile, among other things, I look past this because I do not read Bukowskis work for some profound meaning or insight to life but strictly for fun, therefore expecting little more than alcohol induced writing at times resembling no more than bar banter.

However, even I, in my lingering immaturity, was shocked and repulsed by what appeared to be a casual and tacit endorsement of rape in several stories. Sometimes I feel that Bukowski writes the way he does about the things he does because hes still trying to impress the guys in his high school class, inmates, or briny sailorspirates to be sure.

If you havent read any of his work this is a good introduction of what youll be getting from his novels. The short stories range from excellent to good, and are better than most of the pages found in his novels, given that the nature of the short story forced Bukowski to get to the point instead of wasting paper in drunken rambling.

There are numerous good shorts here, among my favorites are: CLASS, where Hank Chinaski not only boxes but knocks out Ernest Hemingway; and, BOP BOP BEHIND THE CURTAIN, a piece about teenage frolics to a burlesque show, and the hardships of life during the depression.