Charles Bukowski

German-American writer (1920–1994)

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Lived 1920–1994, aged 74Germany

Germany

WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
78 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1920–1994
Aged 74
Known for
Barfly
1987

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He wrote about hangovers, dead-end jobs, and bad sex with a rawness that made the literary establishment wince and made everyone else keep reading. The FBI opened a file on him for a column called Notes of a Dirty Old Man.

Biography

About

Born in Germany in 1920, Heinrich Karl Bukowski landed in Los Angeles and spent decades grinding through post offices and rooming houses, writing thousands of poems and hundreds of stories for small presses that would take them. He published extensively from the early 1940s through the early 1990s, eventually releasing over sixty books — among them Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window and Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame — most gathered later by John Martin's Black Sparrow Press. Time called him a "laureate of American lowlife." American academia mostly ignored him while he…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

said1971

But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.

— Post Office (1971)

Charles Bukowski

said1971

I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes.

— Post Office (1971)

Charles Bukowski

said1971

I thought about taking a shower but I could see the headlines: MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

— Post Office (1971)

Charles Bukowski

said1971

Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.

— Post Office (1971)

Charles Bukowski

said1967

I was given the job of milking the cows, finally, and it got me up earlier than anybody. But it was kind of nice, pulling at those cows' tits (pg. 172).

— Tales of ordinary madness (1967-83)

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