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The Pleasures Of The Damned

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The Pleasures Of The Damned by Charles Bukowski is a collection of the author's poetry that captures the rawness of life, delving into themes of love, loss, and the gritty realities of the world. Readers reflect on how Bukowski's work strips down societal pretenses and provides a refreshing dose of reality, showcasing the beauty and darkness of everyday life with a unique writing style that is both vulgar and perceptive.

Characters:

The characters, represented through various poems, reflect diverse human experiences and struggles, often focusing on themes of loneliness and resilience.

Writing/Prose:

The writing style is characterized by raw lyricism and cynicism, offering perceptive insights into harsh realities.

Plot/Storyline:

The plot is a collection that spans the poet's career, featuring unpublished and posthumously discovered works, but lacks comprehensiveness with notable omissions.

Setting:

The setting encompasses various facets of modern life, particularly reflecting Bukowski's personal experiences in Los Angeles.

Pacing:

The pacing is inconsistent, reflecting varied quality across the poems, with some resonating deeply and others being less impactful.

Notes:

The collection spans Bukowski's poetic career from his early days to old age.
It includes unpublished poems and works discovered after his death.
Some notable poems such as 'Dinosauria We Mind' and 'The Bluebird' are present, but key pieces like 'Nirvana' and 'The Laughing Heart' are missing.
Bukowski's work is characterized by hard-boiled cynicism and a sensitive core.
His poetry reveals his perception of the dark and hopeless aspects of humanity.
Many readers find his writing to be an outlet for frustration and disappointment.
Bukowski's writing, although vulgar, reflects the harsh realities of life, particularly for the lower classes.
While some readers appreciate his gritty realism, others find his poetry overrated or forgettable.
The anthology is seen as a comprehensive overview of Bukowski's best-known work and is recommended for new readers.
The collection captures the rawness of life and offers profound insights on love and suffering.

Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

The poems contain themes of depression, substance abuse, vulgarity, and adult content, making it suitable for more mature readers.

From The Publisher:

To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was-and remains-the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose truth has struck a chord with generations of readers.

Edited by John Martin, the legendary publisher of Black Sparrow Press and a close friend of Bukowski's, The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works from Bukowski's long poetic career, including the last of his never-before-collected poems. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extra-ordinary and surprising sensibility, and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a rich lifetime of experiences and speak to Bukowski's "immense intelligence, the caring heart that saw through the sham of our pretenses and had pity on our human condition" (The New York Quarterly). The Pleasures of the Damned is an astonishing poetic treasure trove, essential reading for both longtime fans and those just discovering this unique and legendary American voice.

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About the Author:

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.

 
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