Ham on Rye : A Novel

Ham on Rye
Author(s): Charles Bukowski

“Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, woman, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D.H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

Review(s):
“There is real poignancy in the people encountered in Bukowski’s work.”
“The poet laureate of sour alleys and dark bars, of racetracks and long shots.”
“A prolific poet . . . a popular, accessible, and yes, great artist.”
“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”
“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”



ISBN:  9780061177583