Pulp
Written by Charles Bukowski
Narrated by Christian Baskous
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Bukowski's own brand of humour and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.
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Reviews for Pulp
583 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A funny and engaging read, Bukowski had fun writing this one.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bukowski’s last novel is a fun and ridiculous one. Humorously nihilistic, Pulp tosses around, and even mutates, the standard noir private investigator clichés like candy. Los Angeles P.I. Nick Belane, horny, drunk and broke, has three cases fall into his lap at once. They involve Lady Death, space aliens and a dead French writer (Celine.) And, of course, beautiful but dangerous women – one of which is Death. Unmistakably a Bukowski novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The first two-thirds of this book are pretty much hilarious as Bukowski's down-on-his-luck private eye has to deal with Lady Death, a disgruntled landlord, a mortician, space aliens, annoying bar patrons and staff, various tough guys, and a postman who lives down the hall. The last third sort of fizzles out a bit, and the ending is very weird. I can see how some would be annoyed--but don't read this for the story, which is really irrelevant. Read it for Bukowski's hard-boiled attitudes and off-hand comments. Mostly, it's a pleasure. The audiobook I listened to was read in a suitable hard-boiled, sometimes I don't really care attitude, by Christian Baskous.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the Bukowski that we know and love. It's a fun book through the eyes of an alcohol-drenched detective protagonist and the zany people he surrounds himself with.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Charles Bukowski is one of the those writers you either love or hate. His writing is either considered literary genius or drunken ramblings of a fool. If Bukowski were alive today, I am sure he wouldn't have it any other way. This was his last book. Another one of his books is entitled Notes of a Dirty Old Man. So that kind of gives you the flavor of his writing. He wrote about booze and broads and rambled on.
Bukowski brilliantly entitled the book, "Pulp." I say brilliant because, although he died in 1994, he had the foresight to know that there would be an internet and that there would be Amazon and that, if he entitled his final book "Pulp," it would always be at the top of the list whenever anyone searched for pulp or pulp fiction. Sheer genius that move was! Although it might sell better if the publisher lowered the price to a reasonable level.
This book must be read with the deep understanding that it is not to be taken seriously. Not at all. It is a farce. It is a satire. It is meant to be funny. In it, Bukowski creates a character, Nick Belaine, with a one-man PI office in Los Angeles. In between scratching his balls and taking shots of scotch, he encounters several odd clients, including Lady Death (who has legs that go on forever) who wants him to find Celine, the writer. He is also engaged by a producer who wants him to catch the wife in the act, but that doesnt go well. And, another oddball hires him to track down the space alien, Jeannie, who is haunting him, Of course, there are the obligatory mobsters and guns and bartenders and dames.
The chapters are short, some only a few pages. You could probably pick up the book and start on any page and get the gist of it. If you have read a lot of pulp novels as I have, you will find it hysterically funny. but, then again, you find it to be silly and stupid. That's the nature of Bukowski's writing. Read on. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ridiculous but charming.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's basically like Chandler or Hammett on acid with aliens, Lady Death, and of course the mysterious Red Sparrow.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A hilariously absurd detective drama with aliens and all sorts of madness written at the end of a brilliant and confusing life.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Did not really work for me on any level: not as a novel, not as a pastiche, and not as a story. Writing a bad book in a good way is harder than might be expected. Bukowski does not pull this of very well.Not enjoyable. Avoid.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Unconvincing and disappointing.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I am a huge Bukowski fan, but I just did not like this book. I can appreciate his effort to deviate from his usual style...but I felt that his effort fell flat here. I was disappointed.