Septuagenarian Stew: Stories and Poems (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his latest collection, prolific Bukowski ( Hollywood ) confronts the reader with many of the same down-and-out themes he has been writing about for years. His work for the most part is populated here with society's losers--alcoholic bums, mad housewives, compulsive gamblers--their decaying selves slipping inexorably into oblivion. Life's supposed winners fare no better. The movie star in the story "Fame" is murdered by a fanatic fan. The writer in "Action," who once smugly refused the Pulitzer Prize, squanders all his money at the racetrack and wastes his creative abilities in the process. Even the author's fictionalized self, Henry Chinaski, rescued from being "a pile of human rubble" by an editor interested in his work, can never transcend the junk heap of human existence. He continues to rely, paradoxically, on booze to help him survive. Bukowski's rejection of the redemptive power of love and his refusal to probe the psychological origins of his and his characters' behavior limits the validity of his message. Aside from several arresting images and some entertaining dialogue, the writing is flat and uninspired.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

The prolific poet laureate of the lowlife celebrates his 70th birthday with this long, uneven melange of tales and poems. Many explore familiar Bukowski subjects of alcohol, sex, gambling, writing, and the violence at the heart of human relationships. Taking place on the Los Angeles backstreets, they sympathetically depict individuals whose lives are circumscribed by barrooms and bad jobs. Other pieces present a different view, as Bukowski looks at the vicissitudes of life as a wealthy and famous writer or faces fears of physical and artistic decline. Harry Chinaski, Bukowski's cynical, misogynistic, yet ultimately sympathetic alter ego appears throughout. There is an excellent 200-page book among the nearly 400 pages gathered here. For larger collections.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 375 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; First edition. edition (June 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876857950
• ISBN-13: 978-0876857953
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,524,588 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The old horseplayer beat the odds...., November 12, 2002

By	OAKSHAMAN "oakshaman" (Algoma, WI United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Septuagenerian Stew (Paperback)

This is my second favorite volume of Bukowski. I know this because it has the second greatest number of pages dog-eared over so I can find them again.

Why do I like it? OK, it is because when I read most modern stuff, or watch modern films for that matter, I wonder what planet they are living on. It is seldom anything I recognise. When I read Bukowski, either the poems or the short stories or the novels, I recognise the real world. It is just so damn refreshing to see that there is someone being published that is not totally disconnected with reality- at least working class reality.

Will you like this book? Well, skip to page 282 and read "the masses." If you don't like it, then you ain't going to like the rest....

There is another reason that I like this book. It emphacises that the old horseplayer beat the odds and actually made it into his seventies. He "Buk'd" some steep odds there....

5.0 out of 5 stars Back when he was alive!, March 9, 2006

By	Afshin Rattansi (London, England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Septuagenerian Stew (Paperback)

HE WAS never a very good suicide. 'I gave it a go now and then but something always used to go wrong.' As we stand on the brink of war and global recession, what better than to trash the poll tax demand, order a hat trick of tequilas and settle down with an uplifting collection from Bukowski? These poems and prose are so clean and sparse one almost wants to rummage through Bukowski's bin for all the adjectives and adverbs. They are cut-throat tales of the back alleys of America, ergo the West, of a world more dire than that of Ivan Denisovich.

Of course, Bukowski always has a companion, wherever he walks there is always another, wrapped in brown mantle, beside him. But it's only a chemical. It produces a kind of gin-soaked doggerel that is surely the perfect form to describe sleeping on park benches, working the assembly lines, and pensioners with a dollar to their name who pull triggers to alleviate terminal disease. Tragic humour is strewn liberally. In one poem, the Barfly who thanks to Mickey Rourke now drives a BMW, muses on suffering for art as he fingers his Gold Card. He writes of how the critics prefer the poems about him freezing and starving on cheap wine.

With his easy transition into post-Hollywood prosperity he has shown himself to be not just another angry young man although his 'difficulties with women' as the press release puts it, show him to be no less misogynistic. But luckily, the years of body-abuse have not affected the clarity of his vision. It is of a people for whom the word 'change' means distraction, for whom thinking is painful. They move in circles of hopelessness. This sometimes infects his words with the sour, if inevitable, tang of decadence. But then, as he himself demonstrates in his poem Nowhere, most English-language authors are writing dross. With so little competition, he can only soar.

(from 1990 and by the author of "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels")

5.0 out of 5 stars bukowski knows hes' good, April 12, 2000

By	supastar (brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Septuagenerian Stew (Paperback)

In this collection, more than others, I think, he writes alot about the process of writing, about how his life has changed since he became a professional writer, and of course he beats up on the "writing" community, and he has some of the most inspiring (seriously) pieces about contemporary literature around. The Rape of The Holy Mother is like a manifesto for the new poet. He's got that same humour and touching bite that he always does, and its a good fat book, perfect for the bathroom, as stall literature.