"Glendoline presumed that the reader was as fascinated by her life as she was--which was a deadly mistake," writes Bukowski--and I can't help but laugh at the irony.

Having read a 600 page collection of his poems and seen the film based on his novel Factotum, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that once again, in his novels we have the same old Bukowski:

Drinking, gambling, racetracks, crazy women, all-caps screaming crazy women, poor treatment (read: damn near rape) of women, and explicit descriptions of various sexual acts with an abundance of the word "cunt." Plenty of quotidian dialogue, repetition of the same story (old guy beds younger woman and it doesn't lasts more than a few days) to the point where I could no longer remember the difference between all the characters...and then, just like his poems, suddenly a shining, sliver of an example of truth and honesty that would pop up and grab my attention just when I was about to give up on all his boozing womanizing.

I don't know what to do with him anymore. I gave it a go with all his types of writing--there's always 10% absolute brilliance and 90% blah. Not worth the effort. I tried the poems ("Bluebird" and "For Jane" will always rock, but the rest...forgettable), I tried the novels, but it's time to say goodbye Hank Chinaski. Goodbye Bukowski.