On Drinking
Written by Charles Bukowski
Narrated by Roger Wayne
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
The definitive collection of works on a subject that inspired and haunted Charles Bukowski for his entire life: alcohol.
Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer’s best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed “dirty old man,” Bukowski used alcohol as muse and as fuel, a conflicted relationship responsible for some of his darkest moments as well as some of his most joyful and inspired.
In On Drinking, Bukowski expert Abel Debritto has collected the writer’s most profound, funny, and memorable work on his ups and downs with the hard stuff—a topic that allowed Bukowski to explore some of life’s most pressing questions. Through drink, Bukowski is able to be alone, to be with people, to be a poet, a lover, and a friend—though often at great cost. As Bukowski writes in a poem simply titled “Drinking,”: “for me/it was or/is/a manner of/dying/with boots on/and gun/smoking and a/symphony music background.”
On Drinking is a powerful testament to the pleasures and miseries of a life in drink, and a window into the soul of one of our most beloved and enduring writers.
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.
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Reviews for On Drinking
53 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5DRUNKEN GOD OF TRUTH... SPLITTING YOUR HEAD WIDE OPEN... AND POURING HIS INTOXICATING - HYPNOTIC VERSE OVER YOUR WRITHING WORMHOLED BRAINS ?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bukowski is like the king of raw, gritty, boozy writing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nice selections from his books. Great voice acting on the read. Voice actor sounds a lot like Bill Burr. Appropriate for the content.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This set of excerpts from Bukowski's fiction and non-fiction is not a book that will make you increase your consumption of alcohol, although somehow Bukowski survived more than 7 decades on a diet of whiskey, beer, and wine--advancing to more sophisticated and more expensive varieties as he grew older and presumably could better afford it. Along the way, Bukowski and his fictional self get into bar fights, land in jail, fight with their girlfriends, offend large rooms full of people, and generally have a hell of a time. Even as you are appalled, occasionally amused, and mostly just amazed, you can't turn away from Bukowski's writing. He can write about anything and make it interesting. And, late in the book, when he talks about listening to classical music while writing and what classical music means to him, it is truly moving--and should be required reading for everyone on Planet Earth.I listened to the audiobook, which was exceptionally well performed. I have no idea what Bukowski's actual voice sounded like, although I'm sure one click on Google will let me find out, but as I listen to Roger Wayne read this book, I feel like I'm listening to the author himself. Superb.