Hot Water Music

by Charles Bukowski

Paperback, 1985

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

All Topics

General Fiction

Fiction

Publication

HarperCollins Ecco (1985), Paperback, 221 pages

Description

With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his side of town in Hot Water Music. He gives us little vignettes of depravity and lasciviousness, bite sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque. The stories in Hot Water Music dash around the worst parts of town - a motel room stinking of sick, a decrepit apartment housing a perpetually arguing couple, a bar tended by a skeleton - and depict the darkest parts of human existence. Bukowski talks simply and profoundly about the underbelly of the working class without raising judgement. In the way he writes about sex, relationships, writing, and inebriation, Bukowski sets the bar for irreverent art - his work inhabits the basest part of the mind and the most extreme absurdity of the everyday.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member caklr650

The first few stories are very weak. Hope it gets better as I go along. I find this alot with Buk's short story collections, I seem to like his novels much more than his short stories.

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LibraryThing member MColv9890

Brilliant selection of short stories. My favorite is the one with the beautiful woman at the track who steals all his cash and clothes after taking him to bed in a motel room.

This is required reading for any and all who appreciate Bukowski's novels because his style of writing is equally suited

for short stories.

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LibraryThing member DWallaceFleming

This is the first thing I read of Bukowski's and his terse style seemed to me like a breath of fresh air. It's as if he copied Hemingway's style and then mimicked it to the point of caricature. And yet somehow I'm still saying that's a good thing.

I believe he took the potentiality of Hemingway's

style and magnified it's unpleasantness in a manner similar to how Seth McFarlane exaggerated Matt Groening. Okay, maybe that analogy was pushing it but I love the way no thought or idea is too reprehensible to be included in Bukowski's conception of literature.

By the way, besides the numerous pop culture references, the thing that really got me psyched to start reading Bukowski was the excellent documentaries on him that are available on Netflix.

The length of his stories is interesting as well. These are more like vignettes and so it’s best to consider the whole work together and the interrelations between vignettes.

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LibraryThing member ldsmith1031

A collection of Bukowski shorts. A lot like anyone would expect. Hank Chinaski Bets the races, fucks women and drinks beer and wine, then he writes about it all, laughing all the way to the lonely and depressing night.

LibraryThing member bjeans

Dear Bukowski, you're a sweet dude but really, all your stories are the same hullabaloo. I wish you had more variety. But then i guess people wouldn't like you as much. So in that case, keep up the good work...oh wait, you're dead.

LibraryThing member Salmondaze

A collection of short stories in typical Bukowski form. The rate of Henry Chinaski stories makes this collection one of note and the other stories aren't half bad as well, but of short stories, novels, and poems, I consider short stories to be Charles Bukowski's weakest point.

LibraryThing member Jenloo82

It's Bukowski. No more to be said.

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