Bukowski in Pictures (Hardcover)

by Howard Sounes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Charles Bukowski is a legend of modern literature, a heavy-drinking postal clerk from Los Angeles who rose from obscurity to international acclaim as an author of poetry and fiction. Known as the Dirty Old Man of American writers, he lived a truly picaresque life. His experiences provided the basis for the movie Barfly, for which he wrote the screenplay. Bukowski in Pictures is the first pictorial biography of the writer, and it re-creates his life in a stunning visual display that includes more than two hundred color and black-and-white photographs. Many of these images have never been published before. Bukowski's friends, family members, and former lovers have contributed candid shots, and there are handsome portraits by professional photographers, as well as illustrations by Dave Geiser and R. Crumb. The images have been assembled by Howard Sounes, the author of the acclaimed biography Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life. Sounes has written an Introduction to the book and woven new research and quotations from Bukowski's work into a series of essays and extensive captions that run throughout. There are also extracts from personal letters and rare documents, including Bukowski's recently declassified FBI file. A beautiful book and a fascinating view into an extraordinary life, Bukowski in Pictures is a must for Bukowski devotees and new fans alike.

About the Author
Howard Sounes is also the author of Fred and Rose and Down the Highway, a biography of Bob Dylan. He lives in London. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Canongate Books (December 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841950084
• ISBN-13: 978-1841950082
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,165,985 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything You Wanted To See About Buk, August 30, 2001

By	"mostlybroken" (Vancouver, WA USA) - See all my reviews

An excellent & well laid-out book displaying the life of Charles Bukowski. The book shows the real people & places depicted in Buk's poems & stories. It even has a photo of his grave which brings it home that such a lively individual is no longer with us even though new books of his unpublished/uncollected poems continue to be published. Alan/2001

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars yes, but....., March 6, 2001

By	Joel Yeager (Corning, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

Have to have it if like Buk, but, there are so many errors in the book, missing words etc. that it made me think it was thrown together too quickly on the heals of his last book, Sounes that is, that it sort of makes me think poorly of it. Some of the pic's as well are filler, shots of streets in LA there were like the streets that Buk wandered. Regardless, I had to have it.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable for Bukowski readers, January 24, 2001

By	steve richmond (santa monica, california) - See all my reviews

Howard Sounes has created in photographs what he previously created in words, that is a highly entertaining and complete and even more important, truthful and factually correct account of the life and times of Mr Charles Bukowski. BUKOWSKI IN PICTURES begins with photos of the great writer as an infant, and ends with photos of his tombstone ("Don't Try" being etched into same) and very peaceful final resting place.

Between the birth and death pictures are about 200 pages of around one thousand wonderful color and black & white pictures of Bukowski at every facet of his life, riding a pony as a kid, with grammar school classmates, with high school classmates, as a tot in his dad's arms, and on and on covering every year of his life right on to the final years as one of our planet's most successful scribes both financially and creatively. His huge lifetime body of published works remains unmatched, and when joined with his thousands of paintings, drawings, puts him in the same world class of mega-artists such as William Blake, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and the hundred or so other artist-giants of the human experience and experiment on Earth.

Howard Sounes is up to the challenge. Sounes doesn't back down from describing the complete Bukowski, including those well documented horrible sides of Bukowski's character, which Sounes is able to fully analyze and comment upon in various captions to photos and the inclusion of consise paragraphs which this reviewer finds make this volume excel even more so.

This is a very strong book worth twice as much at the bookstores than is being asked, in my opinion. A Bukowski fan can "read" through this volume with even more enjoyment than those more wordy biographies of Bukowski provide. All the cast of friends, legions of girlfriends, and wives and publishers of Bukowski works, literary peers and allies and even some literary enemies, are herein officially documented in the best photographs available.

Luckily permissions to reprint were granted by all involved. History, Earth's most important and vital literary history, is the big winner here.