Charles Bukowski, originally named Heinrich Karl Bukowski, was born in Andernach, Germany, in 1920. His family emigrated to the United States when he was just a toddler, arriving in 1923. They eventually settled in Los Angeles, which would become the backdrop for much of his writing. Bukowski's childhood was tough; his father regularly abused him, the Great Depression instilled in him a deep sense of class struggle and anger, and he dealt with severe acne that made his teenage years socially challenging. By the time he left Los Angeles City College without earning a degree and moved to New York, he was already feeling like an outsider in the literary scene.
His initial attempts at getting published were unsuccessful, and after a few short stories were accepted in the mid-1940s, he essentially stopped writing for nearly ten years — a period he referred to as his "ten-year drunk." A serious bleeding ulcer in 1954 brought him back to writing, this time focusing on poetry. During the late 1950s and most of the 1960s, he worked a demanding job at a post office in Los Angeles while contributing to small magazines and underground publications. His column in the underground newspaper Open City, titled "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," was controversial enough to land him an FBI file.
“The significant change in his life came in 1969 when John Martin, the publisher of Black Sparrow Press, offered Bukowski a monthly stipend to leave the post office and write full-time.”
At 49, he took the plunge. Within a month, he completed his first novel, Post Office. Over the next twenty years, he published over sixty books, including poetry collections, novels, and short stories, nearly all with Black Sparrow. His alter ego, Henry Chinaski, appeared in much of his work, serving as a semi-autobiographical figure who drank excessively, pursued women, held dead-end jobs, and wrote incessantly.
Bukowski's poems — such as "so you want to be a writer?," "the suicide kid," "this kind of fire," and "1990 special" — feature a straightforward, unembellished style. His subjects included alcohol, sex, poverty, the drudgery and humiliation of work, and the relentless drive to write regardless. Time magazine referred to him as "a laureate of American lowlife," while The New Yorker pointed out his ability to blend confessional intimacy with the boldness of pulp fiction. Although he was largely overlooked by academic critics in the U.S. during his lifetime, he gained a substantial readership in Europe, particularly in Germany and the U.K.
