Just when you thought
the bottom of the Bukowski barrel had been thoroughly scraped over the last
twenty years or so since his death, more juice is soon to be squeezed out of his balls in three
new books:
The Bell Tolls for No
One (edited with an Introduction by David Stephen Calonne)- City Lights (225
pages)
Release date: 14 July
2015
This is a follow up to Calonne's earlier edited City Lights collections of Bukowski's writing Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008), Absence of the Hero (2010) and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (2011). These are excellent previously uncollected works, but descendingly important in value.
From Amazon: The Bell Tolls for No One is a book of previously uncollected short fiction by Bukowski. Beginning with the illustrated, unpublished 1947 story, 'A Kind, Understanding Face,' continuing through his column 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man,' and concluding with his hardboiled contributions to 1980s glossy adult magazines, this volume encompasses the entire range of Buk's talent as a short story writer, from striaght-up genre stories to postmodern blurring of the line between fact and fiction. The book contains an informative introduction by the editor David Stephen Calonne that provides historical context for these seemingly scandalous and chaotic tales, revealing the hidden hand of the master at the top of his form. Also included are several of Bukowski's own illustrations.
On Bukowski.net the editor mentions that the book was delayed because it was difficult to obtain Robert Crumb's permission for his cover illustration.
This is a follow up to Calonne's earlier edited City Lights collections of Bukowski's writing Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008), Absence of the Hero (2010) and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (2011). These are excellent previously uncollected works, but descendingly important in value.
From Amazon: The Bell Tolls for No One is a book of previously uncollected short fiction by Bukowski. Beginning with the illustrated, unpublished 1947 story, 'A Kind, Understanding Face,' continuing through his column 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man,' and concluding with his hardboiled contributions to 1980s glossy adult magazines, this volume encompasses the entire range of Buk's talent as a short story writer, from striaght-up genre stories to postmodern blurring of the line between fact and fiction. The book contains an informative introduction by the editor David Stephen Calonne that provides historical context for these seemingly scandalous and chaotic tales, revealing the hidden hand of the master at the top of his form. Also included are several of Bukowski's own illustrations.
On Bukowski.net the editor mentions that the book was delayed because it was difficult to obtain Robert Crumb's permission for his cover illustration.
Update 19 October 2015:
See my review here: http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/new-release-stories-by-charles-bukowski.html
On Writing (ECCO)- 224
pages Edited by Abel Debritto
Release date: 27
August 2015
On Writing collects many of the letters Bukowski sent to his publishers, fellow writers and friends about his views on writing.
From Amazon: On Writing reveals an artist brutally frank about the drudgery of work and canny and uncompromising about the absurdities of life- and of art. It illuminates the hard-edged, complex humanity of a true American legend and counterculture icon- the 'laureate of American lowlife' (Time)- who stoically recorded society's downtrodden and depraved. It exposes an artist grounded in the visceral, whose work reverberates with the central ideal: "Don't try."
On Writing collects many of the letters Bukowski sent to his publishers, fellow writers and friends about his views on writing.
From Amazon: On Writing reveals an artist brutally frank about the drudgery of work and canny and uncompromising about the absurdities of life- and of art. It illuminates the hard-edged, complex humanity of a true American legend and counterculture icon- the 'laureate of American lowlife' (Time)- who stoically recorded society's downtrodden and depraved. It exposes an artist grounded in the visceral, whose work reverberates with the central ideal: "Don't try."
On Cats (ECCO)- 128 pages Edited by Abel Debritto
Release date:13 October 2015
This book is a
compilation of previously unpublished Bukowski’s poems on cats.
See a recent Guardian article about his two upcoming ECCO books:
See a recent Guardian article about his two upcoming ECCO books:
Also by Abel Debritto
an expensive critical biography- Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground: From Obscurity
to Literary Icon (2013)
Expect many more ECCO
compilations to follow in the future: Charles Bukowski On the Race Track, On Women, On Death, On
Drinking, On Sex, On Old Age, On Love, On Skid Row…
Update: 11 April 2016
ECCO books has recently released Charles Bukowski On Love, edited by Abel Debritto.
The blurb:
In On Love, we see Charles Bukowski reckoning with the complications of love and desire. Alternating between the tough and the tender, the romantic and the gritty, Bukowski exposes the myriad faces of love in the poems collected here - its selfishness and its narcissism, its randomness, its mystery and its misery, and, ultimately, its true joyfulness, endurance and redemptive power. Whether writing about his daughter, his lover, or his work, Bukowski is fiercely honest and reflective, using love as a prism to look at the world and to view his own vulnerable place in it. Memorably moving and, at times, hilarious, On Love reveals Bukowski at his most candid and affecting.
Update: 11 April 2016
ECCO books has recently released Charles Bukowski On Love, edited by Abel Debritto.
In On Love, we see Charles Bukowski reckoning with the complications of love and desire. Alternating between the tough and the tender, the romantic and the gritty, Bukowski exposes the myriad faces of love in the poems collected here - its selfishness and its narcissism, its randomness, its mystery and its misery, and, ultimately, its true joyfulness, endurance and redemptive power. Whether writing about his daughter, his lover, or his work, Bukowski is fiercely honest and reflective, using love as a prism to look at the world and to view his own vulnerable place in it. Memorably moving and, at times, hilarious, On Love reveals Bukowski at his most candid and affecting.
