
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 11, 1994                   TAG: 9403110148
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHARLES BUKOWSKI, POET, NOVELIST, DIES

Charles Bukowski, a poet, novelist and screenwriter whose heavy drinking and hard living were brought to the screen in the 1987 film "Barfly," died Wednesday in a hospital in San Pedro, Calif., near Los Angeles.

Bukowski was 73. The cause was leukemia, said Harvey Klinger, the agent for Black Sparrow Press, Bukowski's publisher.

Bukowski was a bard of the barroom and the brothel, a descendant of the Romantic visionaries who worshiped at the altar of personal excess, violence and madness.

In works such as "Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail," "Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an Eight-Story Window," "Legs, Hips and Behind" and "Ham on Rye," he acted as a tour guide to the nightmare of his own personality, writing in tough, direct language.

Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, and was brought to the United States at age 2. He once said in an interview that he began drinking at 13 to dull the pain of being beaten continually by his father.

After attending Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, he moved to New York City to become a writer. He supported himself by working as a dishwasher, truck driver, mail carrier, parking-lot attendant, elevator operator and Red Cross orderly. He once hung posters in the New York City subways.

In 1946, as the rejection slips piled up, Bukowski set out on 10 years devoted to drink and travel. In 1956, near death, he returned to writing.

"Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail," his first poetry collection, was published in 1959. At least 40 more books followed, all of them rooted in the experiences of a loner and outcast with a keen eye for the absurd.

In novels and short-story collections like "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" (1969), "Post Office" (1971), "Factotum" (1975) and "Ham on Rye" (1982), Bukowski relied on an alter ego named Henry Chinaski, a down-and-out writer with a fierce dedication to women, drink, gambling and failure.

Just before his death, Bukowski completed "Pulp," a mystery novel that will be published this summer. An anthology of his work, "Run With the Hunted," was published in 1993.

by CNB