Charles Bukowski is one of the most widely read authors in the world in everywhere from prisons to universities to drying-out clinics. Since his death in 1994 there’s been a flood of books by and about him, culminating in a 2017 novel that deals with a relationship he might have had with, of all people, Jane Austen.
Aubrey Malone joins the threads on all of these in his up-to-the-minute biography. As well as tackling all the well-known aspects of Bukowski’s life – the horrible childhood, the drinking, the horses, the women, the early stabs at writing for the ‘litmags’ before he became famous – he also introduces unusual issues like whether Bukowski might have married his first love Jane Cooney Baker – an FBI file suggests he did - or whether his iconic address at 1524 De Longpre Avenue should be preserved against allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer.
Both on and off the page Bukowski lived life with his guns blazing. One of the last of the two-fisted drinkers, he defied all the laws of nature by living to the – for him – ripe old age of 73, thanks largely to the tender mercies of John Martin, the man who enabled him to leave his job at the post office and write full time for Black Sparrow Press.
An unlikely Casanova, the book also examines the convoluted trajectories of Bukowski’s love life, especially in the seventies when he oscillated between women like Linda King and ‘Cupcakes’ Brandes before finding an unlikely stability in the arms of another Linda in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro. He was ‘the longest shot that ever came home’ and Bukowski captures him in all his turbulent moods.
Aubrey Malone has also written biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, Tony Curtis and Maureen O’Hara.
