Safe Return Doubtful

It’s necessary to change the way you read to appreciate Bukowski best.
Similar to listening to Tom Waits, early Dylan, Ginsberg. Some passages, and it’s not always easy to identify which ones, need reading over and over again, often with a break between them, to get the most from them. They will stick in your head.

Buy an old copy of the book and highlight them over the years, so it’s easy to find them again and enjoy them always. Or eReaders allow highlighting and save to your profile – but I don’t think Bukowski would have liked that…

I wasn’t much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.

I went home each night dizzy and sick. He was murdering me with the sound of his voice.

There was something about funerals. It made you see things better.

The post office, or any world of work, is only one institutionalised system of control that is designed to beat people, to condition them into accepting that humiliation and failure is the norm. Those who do not rebel against this lose any ability to think for themselves.