I wasn't previously aware that there was a biography of him done. I found it by accident when looking for a copy of Love Is a Dog from Hell
So I bought it. My only apprehension is that this author, Barry Miles, is the "celebrated author of Jack Keroac: King of the Beats." I chaff so much when scholars or Beat-junkies try to lump Bukowski in with them b/c he happened to be a poet, he happened to be an outsider, and he happened to be an iconoclast. He had absolutely no affiliation with the Beats, wasn't a subscriber to their peace-meal paint-by-numbers psedo-philosophies, matter of fact he scoffed at most of this optimism.
Regardless, I'm excited to read this.
From the foreward:
In rereading Hank's books for this biography I found that his work was still fresh, it has not dated, it goes straight to the point. He gave a voice to the disenfranchised, the marginalised, the mad and dysfunctional, the factory hand, the working people, the drunk and disorderly. He made a point of always trying to write clearly so that people knew exactly what he was saying. He did not use a dictionary. He avoided long words and tried to use the easiest, simplest words possible. He told Jean-Francois Duval: 'I like it raw, easy and simple. That way, I don't lie to myself.' In other words, he told the truth.
