Family and early years Bukowski was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in
Andernach,
Prussia,
Weimar Germany. His father was Heinrich (Henry) Bukowski, an American of German descent who had served in the
U.S. army of occupation after
World War I and had remained in Germany after his army service. His mother was Katharina (née Fett). His paternal grandfather, Leonard Bukowski, had moved to the United States from
Imperial Germany in the 1880s. In
Cleveland, Ohio, Leonard met Emilie Krause, an ethnic German who had emigrated from
Danzig (now
Gdańsk,
Poland). They married and settled in
Pasadena, California, where Leonard worked as a successful carpenter. The couple had four children, including Heinrich (Henry), Charles Bukowski's father. His mother, Katharina Bukowski, was the daughter of Wilhelm Fett and Nannette Israel. The name
Israel is widespread among Catholics in the
Eifel region. Bukowski assumed his paternal ancestor had moved from Poland to Germany around 1780, as "Bukowski" is a Polish last name. As far back as Bukowski could trace, his whole family was German. Bukowski's parents met in Andernach following World War I. His father was German-American and a sergeant in the
United States Army serving in Germany after the empire's defeat in 1918. Afterwards, Bukowski's father became a building contractor, set to make great financial gains in the aftermath of the war, and after two years moved the family to Pfaffendorf (today part of
Koblenz). However, given the
crippling postwar reparations being required of Germany, which led to a stagnant economy and high levels of inflation, he was unable to make a living and decided to move the family to the U.S. On April 18, 1923, they sailed from
Bremerhaven to
Baltimore, Maryland, where they settled. Bukowski's family moved to
Mid-City, Los Angeles, in 1930. He later told an interviewer that his father beat him with a
razor strop three times a week from the ages of six to 11 years. He says that it helped his writing, as he came to understand undeserved pain. Bukowski spoke English with a strong German accent and was taunted by his childhood playmates with the epithet "Heini," German diminutive of Heinrich, in his early youth. He was shy and socially withdrawn, a condition exacerbated during his teen years by an extreme case of
acne. In his early teen years, Bukowski had an epiphany when he was introduced to alcohol by his friend William "Baldy" Mullinax, depicted as "Eli LaCrosse" in
Ham on Rye, son of an alcoholic surgeon. "This [alcohol] is going to help me for a very long time," he later wrote, describing a method (drinking) he could use to come to more amicable terms with his own life. After graduating from high school in 1939, Bukowski attended
Los Angeles City College for two years, taking courses in art, journalism, and literature, before quitting at the start of
World War II. He then moved to New York City to begin a career as a financially pinched blue-collar worker with hopes of becoming a writer.
Early writing When Bukowski was aged 23 (March–April 1944), his short story "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" was published in
Story magazine. Two years later, another short story, "20 Tanks from Kasseldown", was published by the
Black Sun Press in Issue III of
Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly, a limited-run, loose-leaf
broadside collection printed in 1946 and edited by
Caresse Crosby. Failing to break into the literary world, Bukowski grew disillusioned with the publication process and quit writing for almost a decade, a time that he referred to as a "ten-year drunk". These "lost years" formed the basis for his later semiautobiographical chronicles, and there are fictionalized versions of Bukowski's life through his highly stylized alter-ego, Henry Chinaski. The small
avant-garde literary magazine Nomad, published by
Anthony Linick and Donald Factor (the son of
Max Factor Jr.), offered a home to Bukowski's early work.
Nomads inaugural issue in 1959 featured two of his poems. A year later,
Nomad published one of Bukowski's best-known essays,
Manifesto: A Call for Our Own Critics.
1960s By 1960, Bukowski had returned to the post office in Los Angeles and began work as a letter filing clerk, a position he held for more than a decade. In 1962, he was distraught over the death of Jane Cooney Baker, his first serious girlfriend. Bukowski turned his inner devastation into a series of poems and stories lamenting her death. E.V. Griffith, editor of Hearse Press, published Bukowski's first separately printed publication, a broadside titled "His Wife, the Painter," in June 1960. This event was followed by Hearse Press's publication of "Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail," Bukowski's first
chapbook of poems, in October 1960. "His Wife, the Painter" and three other broadsides ("The Paper on the Floor", "The Old Man on the Corner" and "Waste Basket") formed the centerpiece of Hearse Press's "Coffin 1", an innovative small-poetry publication consisting of a pocketed folder containing forty-two broadsides and
lithographs which was published in 1964. Hearse Press continued to publish poems by Bukowski through the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. Jon and Louise Webb, publishers of the literary magazine
The Outsider, featured some of Bukowski's poetry in its pages. Under the Loujon Press imprint, the Webbs published Bukowski's
It Catches My Heart in Its Hands in 1963 and
Crucifix in a Deathhand in 1965. In 1964, a daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski, was born to Bukowski and his live-in girlfriend
Frances Smith. She would be his only child. The editor, artist John Wilson McCracken, sent a copy of the magazine to Carl Weissner who would later become Bukowski's longtime West German translator. Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column
Notes of a Dirty Old Man for Los Angeles'
Open City, an underground newspaper. When
Open City was shut down in 1969, the column was picked up by the
Los Angeles Free Press as well as the hippie underground paper
NOLA Express in
New Orleans. In 1969, Bukowski and
Neeli Cherkovski launched their own short-lived
mimeographed literary magazine,
Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. They produced three issues over the next two years.
Black Sparrow years In 1969, Bukowski accepted an offer from
Black Sparrow Press publisher
John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. He was then 49 years old. As he explained in a letter at the time, "I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve." Less than one month after leaving the postal service he finished his first novel,
Post Office. As a measure of respect for Martin's financial support and faith in a relatively unknown writer, Bukowski published almost all of his subsequent major works with Black Sparrow Press, which became a highly successful enterprise. An avid supporter of small independent presses, Bukowski continued to submit poems and short stories to innumerable small publications throughout his career. Bukowski's other affairs were with a recording executive and a twenty-three-year-old redhead; he wrote a book of poetry as a tribute to his love for the latter, titled, "Scarlet" (Black Sparrow Press, 1976). His various affairs and relationships provided material for his stories and poems. Another important relationship was with "Tanya",
pseudonym of "Amber O'Neil" (also a pseudonym), described in Bukowski's "Women" as a pen-pal that evolved into a weekend tryst at Bukowski's residence in Los Angeles in the 1970s. "Amber O'Neil" later self-published a
chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero". In 1976, Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food restaurant owner, rock-and-roll groupie, aspiring actress, heiress to a small Philadelphia "Main Line" fortune and devotee of
Meher Baba. Two years later he moved from the
East Hollywood area, where he had lived for most of his life, to the harborside community of
San Pedro, the southernmost district of Los Angeles. Beighle followed him and they lived together intermittently over the next two years. They were eventually married by
Manly Palmer Hall, a Canadian-born author, mystic, and spiritual teacher, in 1985. Beighle is referred to as "Sara" in Bukowski's novels
Women and
Hollywood. In the 1980s, Bukowski collaborated with cartoonist
Robert Crumb on a series of comic books, with Bukowski supplying the writing and Crumb providing the artwork. Through the 1990s Crumb also illustrated a number of Bukowski's stories, including the collection
The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship and the story "
Bring Me Your Love". Bukowski was also published in
Beloit Poetry Journal.
Live poetry readings Bukowski's live readings were legendary, with the drunk raucous crowd fighting with the drunk angry poet. In 1972, Joe Wolberg, who was the manager of
City Lights Books in San Francisco, rented a hall and paid Bukowski to read his poems. A vinyl album was released by City Lights, which was re-issued by
Takoma Records in 1980. In May 1978, Bukowski traveled to
West Germany and gave a live poetry reading of his work before an audience in
Hamburg. This was released as a double 12" L.P. stereo record titled "CHARLES BUKOWSKI 'Hello. It's good to be back. Bukowski's last international performance was in October 1979 in
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and was released on DVD as ''
There's Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here''. The reading was produced by fan/friend Dennis Del Torre, who rented a venue, Viking Hall, paid Bukowski and his wife Linda to fly up, hired a video crew, promoted the event, and sold tickets. The crowd and Bukowski were very drunk for the event. A heckler was near the stage and can be heard clearly. Del Torre later went to Bukowski's widow, Linda Bukowski, for permission to license it. He thought it was the last reading Bukowski gave, but Linda told him there was another reading after that in Redondo Beach, CA, in early 1980. In March 1980, Bukowski gave his last reading at the Sweetwater music venue in
Redondo Beach, California, which was released as
Hostage on vinyl and audio CD, and
The Last Straw on DVD, filmed and produced by
Jon Monday for mondayMEDIA. In 2010 the unedited versions of both
The Last Straw and
Riot were released as
One Tough Mother on DVD. The funeral rites, orchestrated by his widow, were conducted by
Buddhist monks. He is interred at Green Hills Memorial Park in
Rancho Palos Verdes. An account of the proceedings can be found in
Gerald Locklin's book
Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a 1963 letter to
John William Corrington: "Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important:
not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or, if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it." Bukowski's work was subject to controversy throughout his career.
Hugh Fox claimed that his
sexism in his poetry, at least in part, translated into his life. In 1969, Fox published the first critical study of Bukowski in
The North American Review, and mentioned his attitude toward women: "When women are around, he has to play Man. In a way it's the same kind of 'pose' he plays at in his poetry—
Bogart,
Eric Von Stroheim. Whenever my wife Lucia would come with me to visit him he'd play the Man role, but one night she couldn't come I got to Buk's place and found a whole different guy—easy to get along with, relaxed, accessible." In June 2006, Bukowski's literary archive was donated by his widow to the
Huntington Library in
San Marino, California. Copies of all editions of his work published by the Black Sparrow Press are held at
Western Michigan University, which purchased the archive of the publishing house after its closure in 2003.
Ecco Press continues to release new collections of his poetry, culled from the thousands of works published in small literary magazines. According to
Ecco Press, the 2007 release
The People Look Like Flowers at Last will be his final
posthumous release, as now all his once-unpublished work has been made available. == Writing ==