Pulp by Charles Bukowski

The book is Pulp by Charles Bukowski. It was published in 1994 by Black Sparrow Press. I read the first ECCO paperback edition published in 2002. I read it in February of 2023.  

The dedication page reads “Dedicated to bad writing.” That’s definitely true. This book sucks. But there’s a certain self-awareness that I think it was on purpose. It almost seemed like an experiment in bad writing.  

I read it because there’s a Modest Mouse song called “Bukowski.” The beginning lyrics go like this, 

“Woke up this morning and it seemed to me, 
That every night turns out to be 
A little more like Bukowski. 
And yeah, I know he’s a pretty good read. 
But God who’d want to be? 
God who’d want to be such an asshole? 
God who’d want to be? 
God who’d want to be such an asshole?” 

This made me want to read Bukowski. But I think this may have been a bad first read. I will definitely try Bukowski again.  

It was interesting how the starts off like a cliché detective story but then takes a weird sci-fi twist about halfway through.  

The characters were not compelling, but there’s no expectation that they would be. The tone was noir pulp. I felt the hopelessness of the down-and-out. There were no heroes to emulate. All the characters were so one-dimensional.  

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. It barely deserved its large print 202 page count. I hope the next Bukowski I read is better.  

******************** 

Notable Quotables 

You only live once, right? Well, except for Lazarus. Poor sucker, he had to die twice. But I was Nick Belane. You only rode the merry-go-round once. Life was for the daring. (p63) 

Was there a God? And where was the Red Sparrow? I had too many things to solve. Getting out of bed in the morning was the same as facing the blank wall of the Universe. (p102) 

I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can’t be quite senseless because you are aware that it’s senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. (p152)