gsimhoni

My california friend Amelia told me to read this; I took it from her house, and she'd made little notes in it so anyone who borrows it would get the L.A. insider references. I enjoyed reading it; it is a very fast read and fun - and you can tell that he was one of Bukowski's big influences (aside from the fact that Bukowski wrote the intro to the version i read). As a warning it is a book about writing - kind of autobiographical - but its approach has a sweetness to it - or maybe I just felt a maternal twang towards the narrator. It is a very American tale. A twenty-year-old Coloradan, Arturo Bandini, has transplanted himself to L.A. to try to be writer in the bygone era when coffee cost 5 cents a cup. He is a loner who tells wild tales of his experiences, subsisting off oranges stashed under the bed in his cheap hotel room, and writing long romantic letters to his beloved Hackmuth, the man who published his one short story: "The Little Dog Laughed," which is apparently not about dogs but life. What kept coming to my mind was that this situation could never exist again today... maybe it just couldn't exist in New York; coffee is no longer 5 cents a cup, and the artist/writer can no longer shack up in some little hotel somewhere and live off the work of his/her words or pictures without doing something else to pay to live. I did definitley enjoy it though; it is very romantic.

2023-08-03 09:01