Pulp

Rating:
Summary: Bukowski's final farewell
Review: What do you want for a man who has toiled for half a century with words and phrases? Do you want a marching band parade? A shotgun in the mouth? Or how about a novel, a novel that realizes this is the end. "Pulp" does this. It is Buk's goodbye. Fante is in there, John Martin his publisher is there, Lady Death, other characters from his life of writing. You can find him. But, you gotta look carefully. You have to have read Buk before. This is not for first time readers. Dont read this book until you have read alot of Bukowski. Only then will you enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: allegory of death
Review: Written as he was fighting the illness that would kill him, this is Bukowski's farewell to his readers. As he said elsewhere of his hero Céline, "they ripped his guts out and he made them laugh". And this is what he proceeds to to in Pulp. Portraying himself as a blundering, idiotic detective, he pokes the ultimate fun at his own work as a writer. He hasn't even begun to solve any of the mysteries of life and yet he is about to die a meaningless death (in the allegory, the lease on his office is expiring), surrounded by even worse clowns and failures than he is. Personifications of his earlier selves are also there (the gambling addict mailman, see Post Office) and he resolutely thrashes them in the most poignant self-critique you'll ever find anywhere. Believe it or not, this book is a sublime act of bravery in the face of insurmountable odds.

Rating:
Summary: It's A Horrible Life
Review: _Pulp_ is Charles Bukowski's final novel, probably summing up his extremely pessimistic view of life. According to Bukowski, the world is filled almost completely with con artists, women who cheat on their husbands, and people who would do whatever was necessary, even murder, to obtain the all mighty dollar. Everyone else is probably just too stupid to know otherwise.

Los Angeles private investigator, Nick Belane, a dispeptic Phillip Marlowe-like individual who stands in for the author in the novel, is told by one of the female characters in the book how miserable he world is: "The earth. Smog, murder, the poisoned air, the poisoned food, the hatred, the hopelessness, everything...It's so sad, no wonder you drink so much."

_Pulp_'s coda bring to mind Gustave Flaubert's novella, "A Simple Heart," in which a beautiful bird hovers over a dying character, promising a glorious and wonderful hereafter, after a life full of misery and pain. Unfortunately, this misanthropic book left a very sour taste in my mouth.