Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Gathered from the free-wheeling column Charles Bukowski wrote for the underground newspaper Open City, Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a barrage of anecdote, memory, invective, and invention with no regard for the boundary between fact and fiction. In loose, profane bursts, Bukowski riffs on drinking, sex, poverty, writing, and the assorted lowlifes, hustlers, and lovers who cross his path.

There is no plot and little decorum—just the roving voice of a man determined to say the unsayable, whether he is recounting a squalid encounter, settling a score, or spinning a tall tale into something like philosophy. The result is by turns hilarious, repellent, tender, and provocative.

An early landmark in Bukowski's rise from obscure poet to cult figure, Notes of a Dirty Old Man captures his voice at its rawest and most unguarded—a scrappy, unfiltered dispatch from the American underground.