Charles Bukowski Tells the Story of His Worst Hangover Ever

Charles Bukows­ki, “Hank” to his friends, was once called the “best poet in Amer­i­ca” by kin­dred spir­it Jean Genet. He was a writer who told the truth, when he wasn’t lying, and who could tell a great sto­ry, whether sober or drunk. Bukows­ki once told Sean Penn in a 1987 Inter­view mag­a­zine piece: “Alco­hol is prob­a­bly one of the great­est things to arrive upon the earth — along­side of me. Yes…these are two of the great­est arrivals upon the sur­face of the earth. So…we get along.” This state­ment encap­su­lates the qual­i­ties Bukows­ki is best known for—lifelong heavy drink­ing and brava­do. They tend to go hand in hand, espe­cial­ly in nov­el­ists of his gen­er­a­tion. But what made him a poet was anoth­er qual­i­ty the booze helped him cope with, his ten­den­cy to be “a shy, with­drawn per­son,” an almost ten­der per­son, and humane in his own low-rent way. In the video above, he tells the sto­ry of his worst hang­over ever. I’ll let him tell it. There’s no way a para­phrase could come close to Bukowski’s own voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

The Last Faxed Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.


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  • Evan Knudsen says:

    …‘I felt bet­ter, you know?…’ — The cure for a mon­ster hang­over is watch­ing some­one fall to their death. That shows you that some­one is worse off than you.

  • diamond dave says:

    TO THOSE WHO DONT KNOW WHO BUKOWSKI WAS LETS JUST SAY THIS.HIS EXCREMENT HAD MORE TALENT THAN MOST SO CALLED WRITERS. HIS SHORT STORIES WERE TERRIFYINGLY ALL TOO REAL AND HIT HOME WITH ME. SO LETS ALL RAISE OURS GLASSES AND SALUTE THE KING OF LOW RENT REALISM AND WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD! CHEERS TO BUKE !

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