35 Facts About Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

Charles Bukowski's writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles.

Charles Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s.

Charles Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career.

Charles Bukowski's father was Heinrich Bukowski, an American of German descent who had served in the US army of occupation after World War I and had remained in Germany after his army service.

Charles Bukowski assumed his paternal ancestor had moved from Poland to Germany around 1780, as "Charles Bukowski" is a Polish last name.

Charles Bukowski had an affair with Katharina, a German friend's sister, and she subsequently became pregnant.

Charles Bukowski repeatedly claimed to be born out of wedlock, but Andernach marital records indicate that his parents married one month before his birth.

Charles Bukowski's family moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, in 1930.

Charles Bukowski later told an interviewer that his father beat him with a razor strop three times a week from the ages of six to 11 years.

Charles Bukowski says that it helped his writing, as he came to understand undeserved pain.

Young Charles Bukowski spoke English with a strong German accent and was taunted by his childhood playmates with the epithet "Heini," German diminutive of Heinrich, in his early youth.

Charles Bukowski was shy and socially withdrawn, a condition exacerbated during his teen years by an extreme case of acne.

Charles Bukowski then moved to New York City to begin a career as a financially pinched blue-collar worker with hopes of becoming a writer.

On July 22,1944, with the war ongoing, Charles Bukowski was arrested by FBI agents in Philadelphia, where he lived at the time, on suspicion of draft evasion.

Charles Bukowski was held for seventeen days in Philadelphia's Moyamensing Prison.

When Charles Bukowski was aged 24, his short story "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip" was published in Story magazine.

In 1955, Charles Bukowski was treated for a near-fatal bleeding ulcer.

Several of Charles Bukowski's poems were published in the late 1950s in Gallows, a small poetry magazine published briefly by Jon Griffith.

Charles Bukowski turned his inner devastation into a series of poems and stories lamenting her death.

In 1964 a daughter, Marina Louise Charles Bukowski, was born to Charles Bukowski and his live-in girlfriend Frances Smith.

In 1969, Charles Bukowski accepted an offer from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing.

An avid supporter of small independent presses, Charles Bukowski continued to submit poems and short stories to innumerable small publications throughout his career.

Charles Bukowski embarked on a series of love affairs and one-night trysts.

In 1976, Charles Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food restaurant owner, rock-and-roll groupie, aspiring actress, heiress to a small Philadelphia "Main Line" fortune and devotee of Meher Baba.

In 1972, Joe Wolberg, who was the manager of City Lights Books in San Francisco, rented a hall and paid Charles Bukowski to read his poems.

In May 1978, Charles Bukowski traveled to West Germany and gave a live poetry reading of his work before an audience in Hamburg.

The crowd and Charles Bukowski were very drunk for the event.

Charles Bukowski thought it was the last reading Bukowski gave, but Linda told him there was another reading after that in Redondo Beach, CA in early 1980.

Charles Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9,1994, in San Pedro, aged 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Charles Bukowski is interred at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Charles Bukowski's gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity.

Charles Bukowski often spoke of Los Angeles as his favorite subject.

Charles Bukowski performed live readings of his works, beginning in 1962 on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles and increasing in frequency through the 1970s.

Charles Bukowski could be generous; for example, after a sold-out show at Amazingrace Coffeehouse in Evanston, Illinois, on November 18,1975, he signed and illustrated over 100 copies of his poem "Winter," published by No Mountains Poetry Project.