Spinning Off Bukowski [Paperback]

Steve Richmond (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 142 pages
• Publisher: Sun Dog Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941543102
• ISBN-13: 978-0941543101
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,807,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, not great, March 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Spinning Off Bukowski (Paperback)

I you want to read the goods on Bukowski, check out Neeli Cherkovski's Bukowski: A Life. And if you want to see how bad Steve Richmond is threatened by Cherkovski's book, read the review Richmond posted of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I bought Spinning Off Bukowski. I'm glad I read it. Hell, I'm glad it exists in the world. The more material out there on one of America's greatest writers the better. It's especially important that those who knew him intimately get the words down on paper.

This effort has a lot of good anecdotes about the two writers' old days in California, but I wish there were more pages about Buk in it and fewer about Richmond.

If you're like me, you'll want everything you can find on Bukowski, the well done and the trash. This book is not trash by any means, but it's not all that great, either.

Buy it, read it, put it on your shelf, wait for the next one that comes out and get that one, too. That's my plan, anyway.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars a waste of time..., May 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Spinning Off Bukowski (Paperback)

This guy knew Bukowski, it seems. Okay. The story is he was going to study law until he met Buk...and decided he wanted to write poetry.
Well, guess what? This guy Richmond should have stuck with law and abulance chasing...because, as a writer, he doesn't have it.
Nor do the other hacks: Cherkovski, Gerald Laughlin, et al.

Read the Sounes book, if you feel a need to read ABOUT Bukowski...
although, it may ultimately be a waste of time, because none of them
can touch what Bukowski created himself. Bottom line: just read Bukowski, and skip the pretenders. Also, SUNLIGHT HERE I AM is quite good. Contains just about every interview Bukowski ever gave.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm the author, March 30, 2003

By 

steven a richmond (santa monica, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spinning Off Bukowski (Paperback)

My only criticism of this volume is a good number of vital chapters are missing.. edited out. Every chapter is a single interaction of myself with Bukowski: I relive the event (in the present tense) writing down exactly what is happening, along with the when/where/who/why factors involved. My publisher had a "pre-set" length in pages (around 150) that he wanted to print/publish. Therefore my original manuscript was cut down to a much shorter final manuscript. Thus SPINNING OFF BUKOWSKI shows a good deal of "blank canvas" in its final printed form (at least on my eye). It seems to me a finished SPINNING would approach 500 pages rather than the 150 page volume now on sale all over the place (Earth). E mail me (por favor) if interested.