The Reading Warehouse

The definitive collection of works on a subject that inspired and haunted Charles Bukowski for his entire life: alcohol.

Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer's best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed "dirty old man," Bukowski used alcohol as muse and as fuel, a conflicted relationship responsible for some of his darkest moments as well as some of his most joyful and inspired.

In On Drinking, Bukowski expert Abel Debritto has collected the writer's most profound, funny, and memorable work on his ups and downs with the hard stuff--a topic that allowed Bukowski to explore some of life's most pressing questions. Through drink, Bukowski is able to be alone, to be with people, to be a poet, a lover, and a friend--though often at great cost. As Bukowski writes in a poem simply titled "Drinking," "for me/it was or/is/a manner of/dying/with boots on/and gun/smoking and a/symphony music background."

On Drinking is a powerful testament to the pleasures and miseries of a life in drink, and a window into the soul of one of our most beloved and enduring writers.

Roger Wayne served in the Air Force as a radio and television broadcast journalist in South Korea and won several awards before obtaining a BA degree in communications and journalism. He is an actor living in New York, narrating audiobooks, working on independent film projects, performing off Broadway, and auditioning for major network shows.

Abel Debritto is an author, translator, and Fulbright Scholar at Brown University. He is currently working on the Modernist Journals Project, a globally renowned project in the digital humanities.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-born American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambiance of his home city of Los Angeles. He published his first story at twenty-four and began writing poetry at thirty-five, publishing extensively in small literary magazines and small presses from the early 1940s through the early '90s. The King of the Underground, he remained loyal to those small press editors who had first championed his work. During his life he wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, publishing over sixty books.