“Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and The Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter Los Angeles slums, bars, and more are featured in Slouching Toward Nirvana, the third of five books of unpublished poems from Charles Bukowski, considered by many to be America’s most imitated and influential poet.
the gas line is leaking, the bird is gone from the cage, the skyline is dotted with vultures; Benny finally got off the stuff and Betty now has a job as a waitress; and the chimney sweep was quite delicate as he giggled up through the soot. I walked miles through the city and recognized nothing as a giant claw ate at my stomach while the inside of my head felt airy as if I was about to go mad. it’s not so much that nothing means anything but more that it keeps meaning nothing, there’s no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say. even the best books are dry sawdust. —from "fingernails; nostrils; shoelaces"
In the literary pantheon, Charles Bukowski remains a counterculture luminary. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he has struck a chord with generations of readers, writing raw, tough poetry about booze, work, and women in an authentic voice that is, like the work of the Beats, iconoclastic and even dangerous. Edited by his longtime publisher, John Martin, of Black Sparrow Press, and now in paperback, The Continual Condition includes more of this legend’s never-before-collected poems.
In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country's most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah. Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality. In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.
Elin Hilderbrand, author of the enchanting Summer People and The Beach Club, invites you to experience the perfect getaway with her sparkling novel, The Blue Bistro. Adrienne Dealey has spent the past six years working for hotels in exotic resort towns. This summer she has decided to make Nantucket home. Left flat broke by her ex-boyfriend, she is desperate to earn some fast money. When the desirable Thatcher Smith, owner of Nantucket's hottest restaurant, is the only one to offer her a job, she wonders if she can get by with no restaurant experience. Thatcher gives Adrienne a crash course in the business...and they share an instant attraction. But there is a mystery about their situation: what is it about Fiona, the Blue Bistro's chef, that captures Thatcher's attention again and again? And why does such a successful restaurant seem to be in its final season before closing its doors for good? Despite her uncertainty, Adrienne must decide whether to open her heart for the first time, or move on, as she always does. Infused with intimate Nantucket detail and filled with the warmth of passion and the breeze of doubt, The Blue Bistro is perfect summer reading.
This is a collection of 175 previously unpublished works by Bukowski. It contains yarns about his childhood in the Depression and his early literary passions, his apprentice days as a hard-drinking, starving poetic aspirant, and his later years when he looks back at fate with defiance.
Everybody loves Novice to Master! As you'll see in the glowing endorsements and reviews included below, this modern spiritual classic has been embraced by readers of all types. In his singularly humorous and biitingly direct way, Zen abbot Soko Morinaga tells the story of his rigorous training at a Japanese Zen temple, his spiritual growth and his interactions with his students and others. Morinaga's voice is uniquely tuned to the truth of the condition of the human mind and spirit and his reflections and interpretations are unvarnished and succinct. His great gift is the ability to lift the spirit of the reader all the while exposing the humility and weakness in the lives of people, none more so than his own. Read on to see what everyone from Publishers Weekly to well-known Buddhist figures and even New York Times bestselling author Anthony Swofford have to say about this one of a kind book!
The New York Times bestselling author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero delivers a gripping and brilliant dissection of our celebrity obsessed culture. • “Arguably the novel of the 1990’s…Should establish Ellis as the most ambitious and fearless writer of his generation…a must read.” —The Seattle Times Set in 90s Manhattan, Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know. He's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another on the eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York City history. And now it's time to move to the next stage. But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind. With the same deft satire and savage wit he has brought to his other fiction, Bret Ellis gets beyond the facade and introduces us, unsparingly, to what we always feared was behind it. Glamorama shows us a shadowy looking-glass reality, the juncture where fame and fashion and terror and mayhem meet and then begin to resemble the familiar surface of our lives. Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards!
“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter War All the Time is a selection of poetry from the early 1980s. Charles Bukowski shows that he is still as pure as ever but he has evolved into a slightly happier man that has found some fame and love. These poems show how he grapples with his past and future colliding.
