Pulp

Rating:
Summary: Worse thing he ever wrote!!
Review: Now don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Bukowski fan. Post Office is a great novel and Women is pretty damn good also, but this is just awful. If this was his first ever novel, it would never have been published. Bukowski always writes about how he never got anything into print for 25 years and if it was anything like this then I can believe why. Pulp, is just a very bad book. The story is stupid, the plot is a mess, the characters are dumb. The only good thing about it is it's short. It's a shame to read something so bad from someone I used to love to read. Stay well away from this book, you will only be very disappointed.

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: 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.