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Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook : Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 by Charles Bukowski (2008, Trade Paperback)
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherCity Lights
ISBN-100872864928
ISBN-139780872864924
eBay Product ID (ePID)65984877
Product Key Features
Book TitlePortions from a Wine-Stained Notebook : Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990
Number of Pages300 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2008
TopicShort Stories (Single Author), General
GenreFiction, Literary Collections
AuthorCharles Bukowski
FormatTrade Paperback
Dimensions
Item Height0.9 in
Item Weight15.5 Oz
Item Length9.1 in
Item Width6.1 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2008-020485
Reviews"The pillars of his life, as Charles Bukowski saw it, were elemental: 'Poetry, paint, sand, whores,' he writes in the title polemic of his new volume of uncollected writings, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook, adding, for good measure; 'food, fire, death, bullshit...the turning of the fan...the bottle.' In a literary climate where it is assumed writing can be taught and networking Helps Your Career, this unholy assemblage of influences has become an almost refreshing creative counter-mantra-and yet it is also a cliché. Prolonged exposure to its twisted logic can be invigorating and boring, which is what it's like to pick through this grab-bag volume. On one page there is the sparkle of Bukowski's genius; on the next there's the self-pitying." -John Freeman, "It features a wealth of previously uncollected Bukowski material, including his first published short stories, book reviews, essays on literature, U.S. politics, his writing craft, biographical accounts, entries from his famous NOTES of a DIRTY OLD MAN newspaper column, tips on how to win at the racetrack and even a review of a Rolling Stones concert. David Stephen Calonne provides a lucid and highly learned introduction to the book. . . . No Bukophile should miss out on this book." --Bold Monkey, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is mightily essential reading for all Bukowski fans. . . . City Lights have given us earlier Bukowski, the man scrapping to find a readership, the man still drinking himself into a stupor in order to quell his fear of live readings. This is hungry Charles Bukowski., "[Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is] a genuine treasure trove of some of Bukowski's most important and entertaining work. David Calonne's excellent introduction provides a comprehensive overview of Bukowski's literary career, and contextualizes its importance and relevance in an intelligent and convincing manner. . . The result is a fascinating collection that clarly show how Bukowski developed his school-of-hard-knocks education into a solid, full-fledged aesthetics, and reveals a surprisingly erudite and well-read mind, proving that there was indeed a method to his apparent madness. The gritty panache and street-level humor with which Bukowski lays bare his hard-earned wisdom makes for a compelling read. . . But Portions is much more than just an entertaining read, offering many revealing insights and behind-the-scenes looks into the workings of the mind of a genuine outsider and literary innovator. As such, Portions provides an important cornerstone in the foundation of what is gradually becoming a true monument in American letters. This is essential reading for Bukowki fans (and skeptics), as well as anyone interested in the development of modern American literature, to which Bukowski has made a major contribution." --Mark Terrill, "[Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is] a genuine treasure trove of some of Bukowski's most important and entertaining work. David Calonne's excellent introduction provides a comprehensive overview of Bukowski's literary career, and contextualizes its importance and relevance in an intelligent and convincing manner. . . The result is a fascinating collection that clarly show how Bukowski developed his school-of-hard-knocks education into a solid, full-fledged aesthetics, and reveals a surprisingly erudite and well-read mind, proving that there was indeed a method to his apparent madness. The gritty panache and street-level humor with which Bukowski lays bare his hard-earned wisdom makes for a compelling read. . . But Portions is much more than just an entertaining read, offering many revealing insights and behind-the-scenes looks into the workings of the mind of a genuine outsider and literary innovator. As such, Portions provides an important cornerstone in the foundation of what is gradually becoming a true monument in American letters. This is essential reading for Bukowki fans (and skeptics), as well as anyone interested in the development of modern American literature, to which Bukowski has made a major contribution." -Mark Terrill, "This is a valuable addition to the expanding, some might say morbidly obese, bulk of posthumous Bukowski titles. It's not just another agglomeration of odds and soda, unfinished drafts, and scraps that weren't good enough to publish the first time around, flaws that characterized his recent output and which even his most fervent acolytes must realize. No, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is a different animal. . . . This collection is also unique in that it offers a glimpse of Bukowski as nonfiction writer. . . . Most of his work, in fact, occupies a murky uncertain terrain, a lawless border town where poetry, fiction, and memoir meet for a light lunch. In some of these essays, we meet a writer of criticism and manifestos, reminding us that Bukowski was never simply a primitive naif but rather a disciplined, self-aware, thoughtful, and widely read artisan. It took a lot of hard work to make it seem otherwise." --Andrew Madigan, More posthumous uncollected prose from the Dirty Old Man. Calonne (English/Eastern Michigan Univ.; William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being, 1983, etc.), who previously edited a volume of Bukowski's interviews, digs up a few more fragments from the author's vast-and scattershot-oeuvre. As with many 'uncollected' selections, the results are a mixed bag, but Bukowski's gruff directness and take-no-crap attitude shine through. Discussing his style in 'Basic Training,' he writes, 'I hurled myself toward my personal god: SIMPLICITY. The tighter and smaller you got it the less chance there was of error and the lie. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.' Certainly, much of Bukowski's genius lay in his plainspoken, immediate, self-assured prose, but his constant attack on the literary establishment also earned him accolades-and scorn-from fellow writers and critics. He held special contempt for pretentious elitists, those, as Calonne eloquently notes in his illuminating introduction, 'who tried to domesticate the sacred barbaric Muse: the disruptive, primal, archaic, violent, inchoate forces of the creative unconscious.' In the more than 35 pieces that comprise the volume, Bukowski runs through all his favorite topics-drinking, fighting, women, horse-racing ('A track is some place you go so you won't stare at the walls and whack off, or swallow ant poison')-but he's at his most lucid and powerful when he explores the process of writing, both his own and others (Artaud, Hemingway, his hero John Fante). There's a neat deconstruction of Ezra Pound, excerpts from his 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man' column and a peripatetic review of a Rolling Stones concert. Though a few of the selections are little more than ill-formed rants, probably originally scrawled across a bar napkin, there is plenty of the visceral, potent, even graphically sexual (tame readers beware of 'Workout') material to satisfy fans.Not for novices, but a welcome addition to Bukowski's growing library., "Bukowski's strength is in the sheer bulk of his contents, the virulent anecdotal sprawl, the melodic spleen without the fetor of the parlor or the classroom, as if he were writing while straddling a cement wall or sitting on a bar stool, the seat of which is made of thorns."--Jim Harrison, NY Times, 2007 "It features a wealth of previously uncollected Bukowski material, including his first published short stories, book reviews, essays on literature, U.S. politics, his writing craft, biographical accounts, entries from his famous NOTES of a DIRTY OLD MAN newspaper column, tips on how to win at the racetrack and even a review of a Rolling Stones concert. David Stephen Calonne provides a lucid and highly learned introduction to the book. . . . No Bukophile should miss out on this book."--Bold Monkey, "It features a wealth of previously uncollected Bukowski material, including his first published short stories, book reviews, essays on literature, U.S. politics, his writing craft, biographical accounts, entries from his famous NOTES of a DIRTY OLD MAN newspaper column, tips on how to win at the racetrack and even a review of a Rolling Stones concert. David Stephen Calonne provides a lucid and highly learned introduction to the book. . . . No Bukophile should miss out on this book." -Bold Monkey, "[Bukowski] could be generous and mean-spirited, heroic and defensive, spot-on and slanted, but he became the world-class writer he had set out to be; he has joined the permanent anti-canon or shadow-canon whose denizens had shown him the way. Today the frequent allusions to him in both popular and mainstream culture tend more to respect than mockery. If scholarship has lagged, this book would indicate that this situation is changing." --Gerald Locklin, "This is a valuable addition to the expanding, some might say morbidly obese, bulk of posthumous Bukowski titles. It's not just another agglomeration of odds and soda, unfinished drafts, and scraps that weren't good enough to publish the first time around, flaws that characterized his recent output and which even his most fervent acolytes must realize. No, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is a different animal. . . . This collection is also unique in that it offers a glimpse of Bukowski as nonfiction writer. . . . Most of his work, in fact, occupies a murky uncertain terrain, a lawless border town where poetry, fiction, and memoir meet for a light lunch. In some of these essays, we meet a writer of criticism and manifestos, reminding us that Bukowski was never simply a primitive naif but rather a disciplined, self-aware, thoughtful, and widely read artisan. It took a lot of hard work to make it seem otherwise." -Andrew Madigan, "[Bukowski] could be generous and mean-spirited, heroic and defensive, spot-on and slanted, but he became the world-class writer he had set out to be; he has joined the permanent anti-canon or shadow-canon whose denizens had shown him the way. Today the frequent allusions to him in both popular and mainstream culture tend more to respect than mockery. If scholarship has lagged, this book would indicate that this situation is changing." -Gerald Locklin, "[The] essays [in Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook] have that sometimes-absent discipline (or help from editors) so that even when they consist of disconnected paragraphs, they have a kind of form. And, I think, a preciseness of language that's missing in his lesser work. I was charmed. . . Editor David Stephen Callone makes the case, in his introduction, that Bukowski had an 'essentially European cultural sensibility,' that his dirtiness was transgressive a la Bataille, that his dark humor is existential. Maybe I'm responding to these intellectual rubrics-or maybe I'm swayed by his refusal to behave, just as my drunken poet friends were years ago. . . there is also a fair measure of the spark that made Bukowski a Los Angeles icon in the first place." -Carolyn Kellogg, This volume is filled with 36 short selections of prose by the late Bukowski, who is especially known for his poetry (e.g., Bone Palace Ballet). Via short stories and nonfiction--introductions to the work of other writers, book reviews, and autobiographical accounts--the reader is taken on a roller-coaster ride through the waxing and waning lucidity and sometimes depravity of Bukowski's trademark topics (perhaps obsessions): sex, drinking, writing, and self-deprecating. Delving into social commentary, such as his observation that society is more interested in an artist's personal life than artistic creations, Bukowski also documents the most private moments of his life, seemingly giving society what it wants. Describing in painful detail the abuse he suffered as a child, his antisocial interactions with others, strange sexual encounters, and ongoing battles with alcoholism and depression, this author remains astoundingly unique. Some will declare him an artistic genius, while others will agree with Bukowski's own depictions of himself as a dirty old man. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries., "The pillars of his life, as Charles Bukowski saw it, were elemental: 'Poetry, paint, sand, whores,' he writes in the title polemic of his new volume of uncollected writings, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook, adding, for good measure; 'food, fire, death, bullshit...the turning of the fan...the bottle.' In a literary climate where it is assumed writing can be taught and networking Helps Your Career, this unholy assemblage of influences has become an almost refreshing creative counter-mantra--and yet it is also a cliché. Prolonged exposure to its twisted logic can be invigorating and boring, which is what it's like to pick through this grab-bag volume. On one page there is the sparkle of Bukowski's genius; on the next there's the self-pitying." --John Freeman, "With selected pieces ranging from 1944-1990, Bukowski cleverly paints his careful moments of brutal honesty that can be regarded as some of the most sublime narratives Bukowski's ever produced . . . If Bukowski fans find their personal library lacking this spirited collection, I'd suggest they be quick to snag a copy." -Tony R. Rodriguez, This volume is filled with 36 short selections of prose by the late Bukowski, who is especially known for his poetry (e.g., Bone Palace Ballet). Via short stories and nonfiction-introductions to the work of other writers, book reviews, and autobiographical accounts-the reader is taken on a roller-coaster ride through the waxing and waning lucidity and sometimes depravity of Bukowski's trademark topics (perhaps obsessions): sex, drinking, writing, and self-deprecating. Delving into social commentary, such as his observation that society is more interested in an artist's personal life than artistic creations, Bukowski also documents the most private moments of his life, seemingly giving society what it wants. Describing in painful detail the abuse he suffered as a child, his antisocial interactions with others, strange sexual encounters, and ongoing battles with alcoholism and depression, this author remains astoundingly unique. Some will declare him an artistic genius, while others will agree with Bukowski's own depictions of himself as a dirty old man. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries., "[The] essays [in Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook] have that sometimes-absent discipline (or help from editors) so that even when they consist of disconnected paragraphs, they have a kind of form. And, I think, a preciseness of language that's missing in his lesser work. I was charmed. . . Editor David Stephen Callone makes the case, in his introduction, that Bukowski had an 'essentially European cultural sensibility,' that his dirtiness was transgressive a la Bataille, that his dark humor is existential. Maybe I'm responding to these intellectual rubrics--or maybe I'm swayed by his refusal to behave, just as my drunken poet friends were years ago. . . there is also a fair measure of the spark that made Bukowski a Los Angeles icon in the first place." --Carolyn Kellogg, "With selected pieces ranging from 1944-1990, Bukowski cleverly paints his careful moments of brutal honesty that can be regarded as some of the most sublime narratives Bukowski's ever produced . . . If Bukowski fans find their personal library lacking this spirited collection, I'd suggest they be quick to snag a copy." --Tony R. Rodriguez, More posthumous uncollected prose from the Dirty Old Man. Calonne (English/Eastern Michigan Univ.; William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being, 1983, etc.), who previously edited a volume of Bukowski's interviews, digs up a few more fragments from the author's vast--and scattershot--oeuvre. As with many 'uncollected' selections, the results are a mixed bag, but Bukowski's gruff directness and take-no-crap attitude shine through. Discussing his style in 'Basic Training,' he writes, 'I hurled myself toward my personal god: SIMPLICITY. The tighter and smaller you got it the less chance there was of error and the lie. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.' Certainly, much of Bukowski's genius lay in his plainspoken, immediate, self-assured prose, but his constant attack on the literary establishment also earned him accolades--and scorn--from fellow writers and critics. He held special contempt for pretentious elitists, those, as Calonne eloquently notes in his illuminating introduction, 'who tried to domesticate the sacred barbaric Muse: the disruptive, primal, archaic, violent, inchoate forces of the creative unconscious.' In the more than 35 pieces that comprise the volume, Bukowski runs through all his favorite topics--drinking, fighting, women, horse-racing ('A track is some place you go so you won't stare at the walls and whack off, or swallow ant poison')--but he's at his most lucid and powerful when he explores the process of writing, both his own and others (Artaud, Hemingway, his hero John Fante). There's a neat deconstruction of Ezra Pound, excerpts from his 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man' column and a peripatetic review of a Rolling Stones concert. Though a few of the selections are little more than ill-formed rants, probably originally scrawled across a bar napkin, there is plenty of the visceral, potent, even graphically sexual (tame readers beware of 'Workout') material to satisfy fans.Not for novices, but a welcome addition to Bukowski's growing library., "In digging up more fragments from the author's vast (and uneven) library, editor David Stephen Calonne . . . reveals many of the Dirty Old Man's less-than-savory peccadilloes, but also his singular significance to 20th-century American literature . . . Over the course of the 35-plus pieces in this collection, Bukowski makes full use of his Muse, touching on nearly all his favorite topics: drinking, women, sex ('Workout' could carry an X rating), fighting, horse-racing, the drudgery of the nine-to-five . . . Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook is a welcome addition to the growing Bukowski library . . . " --Eric Liebetrau, "Bukowski's strength is in the sheer bulk of his contents, the virulent anecdotal sprawl, the melodic spleen without the fetor of the parlor or the classroom, as if he were writing while straddling a cement wall or sitting on a bar stool, the seat of which is made of thorns."-Jim Harrison, NY Times, 2007 "It features a wealth of previously uncollected Bukowski material, including his first published short stories, book reviews, essays on literature, U.S. politics, his writing craft, biographical accounts, entries from his famous NOTES of a DIRTY OLD MAN newspaper column, tips on how to win at the racetrack and even a review of a Rolling Stones concert. David Stephen Calonne provides a lucid and highly learned introduction to the book. . . . No Bukophile should miss out on this book."--Bold Monkey
Dewey Edition22
Dewey Decimal811/.54
SynopsisImportant, uncollected work from one of the most infamous, over-the-top writers of American literature., Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), one of the most outrageous and controversial figures of 20th-century American literature, was so prolific that many important pieces were never collected during his lifetime. Portions is a substantial selection of these wide-ranging works, most of which have been unavailable since their original appearance in underground newspapers, literary journals, even porno mags. Among the highlights are his first published short story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip"; his last short story, "The Other"; his first and last essays; and the first installment of his famous "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" column. The book contains meditations on his familiar themes (drinking, horse-racing, etc.) as well as singular discussions of such figures as Artaud, Pound, and the Rolling Stones. Other significant works include the experimental title piece; a fictionalized account of meeting his hero, John Fante ("I Meet the Master"); an unflinching review of Hemingway ("An Old Drunk Who Ran Out of Luck"); the intense, autobiographical "Dirty Old Man Confesses"; and several discussions of his aesthetics ("A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack (Tall)," "In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die," and "Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way", revealing an unexpectedly learned mind behind his seemingly offhand productions. Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook is essential reading for Bukowski fans, as well as a good introduction for new readers of this innovative, unconventional writer. "Finally, after Bukowski's nearly 50 published books: novels, short stories, poetry, letters, essays, etc. David Calonne has unearthed Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook , the previously missing link in Bukowski's oeuvre that suddenly makes everything come clear." --John Martin, Black Sparrow Press "You know, I just think this is really hot. Among its many gifts, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook has one of the best lesbian sex scenes I ever read. I read Bukowski standing up one day in a bookstore (City Lights) and thought he did it too. What Henry Miller did. He wrote American. When it meant something good. Fucked up, male, but incredibly true. In a distinct rhythm." --Eileen Myles, author of Sorry, Tree and Cool for You "Bukowski wrote the way he lived, and Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook is as vivid, bad-ass, screamingly funny, and gutter-angelic as the man himself. Reading these stories and essays, you can hear the beating heart of the poet in every line. Bukowski never wasted a word, and this collection should go far towards shining a light on prose in danger of being lost in the shadow of its larger-than-life author. Those new to his work will have the good fortune of discovering a writer who could break your heart, make you howl, and slap you off your bar-stool you in a single sentence. In a world long since gone lousy with faux hard-living typers and posers, he was the original." --Jerry Stahl author of Permanent Midnight, Perv, Plainclothes Naked, and I, Fatty . Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) published his first story when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. His first book of poetry was published in 1959; he went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including books published by City Lights Publishers such as Notes of a Dirty Old Man , More Notes of a Dirty Old Man , The Most Beautiful Woman in Town , Tales of Ordinary Madness , Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook , and Absence of the Hero .
LC Classification NumberPS3552.U4A6 2008
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