Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader

An unsparing, chronological tour through Charles Bukowski’s astonishing life, gathered from decades of his most vital fiction and verse.

The best of Bukowski's novels, stories, and poems, this collection reads like an autobiography, relating the extraordinary story of his life and offering a sometimes harrowing, invariably exhilarating reading experience.

Bukowski draws upon twenty-five years of work across more than twenty volumes, charting a personal chronicle from a Depression-era childhood in Los Angeles through bleak rooming houses and postal sorting shifts.

The narrative tracks his alter ego through charity hospital wards, skid-row bars, and late-night typing sessions sustained by cheap wine and classical radio.

Across every decade, the selections capture the unvarnished humor and lyrical clarity that define his literary endurance. A must for this counterculture idol's legion of fans.

• Raw Honesty: Brutal recollections recount his youth under an abusive father who delivered weekly razor-strop beatings, alongside schoolyard brawls and a triumphant home run against fifth-graders.


• Against the Odds: Vivid vignettes expose the absurd indignities of working life, from scrubbing caked venetian blinds in Philadelphia dive bars to delivering letters under a sadistic supervisor in a red shirt.


• Poetry Anthology: Candid verses capture tense afternoons wagering on horses at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, balanced against volatile love affairs where typewriters were smashed in the street.


• American Literature: Reflective later entries document his unexpected transition into Hollywood film sets and worldwide acclaim, adapting his barroom memories for the screen while fiercely guarding his solitude.


• Also by This Author: Essential Bukowski, On Cats and On Writing.

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.