life. It is a more personal and serious way for readers and fans to get to know more about the author and how he lived. It begins during his early childhood by explaining the difficult relationship that he had with his father. His father whipped him for the slightest reasons whenever he got the chance. Bukowski became numb from the pain and began isolating himself from everyone around him, even other children at school. Eventually he was able to move out on his own and began entering drinking and gambling contests because he found he was very good at it. He began his cycle of getting kicked out and moving into different homes and hotels (which is elaborated more on in Notes of a Dirty Old Man). His life would go downhill fast until his writing career became slightly successful and then go downhill again; his article was published in Story and other magazines, the underground newspaper published his stories, and then eventually by Essex House. In between each success he would work unfulfilling jobs, drink more than usual, and take advantage of the generosity of anyone who would let him. Quotes "Can't they see through my skin, can't they see that I am nothing?" "I became another drunk, thinking of suicide, sitting in little rooms for days with all the shades down, wondering what was out there and what was wrong with it- not knowing whether to blame it on my father or myself or them." "The people walk with such an indifference I begin to hate them, but then again I've never really been fond of anything." "They will kill him because he has not died at all. I have died nine-tenths but keep the other one-tenth like a gun." "We are all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." Alcoholism In the novel Alcoholism is very prevalent in both of Bukowski's Dirty Old Man pieces. He displays many of the outcomes that most people with alcoholism show as well: self-control problems, difficulty in identifying feelings, apathy toward external reality, difficulty in emotional processing, and more depressed and/or anxious, and a face deformed by its abuses. However, his alcoholism is not an issue that Bukowski wishes to change; it is simply a