sábado, 18 de febrero de 2017

Dick Bruna

Dick Bruna

(1927 - 2017)


Dick Bruna lived and worked in Utrecht for most of his life. His books have been translated into more than 50 languages and have sold more than 85 million copies worldwide. His illustrations also feature on a wide range of other products. Over the past 60 years, three generations have grown up with Miffy and her friends.



his life

Dick Bruna was born in Utrecht on 23 August 1927 as Hendrikus Magdalenus Bruna, the son of Albert Willem Bruna and Johanna Clara Charlotte Erdbrink. His brother Frederik Hendrik Bruna was born in 1931. Dick's father was a publisher for A.W. Bruna & Zoon, the  company founded by his great-grandfather in 1868. Although it was decided that Dick would also join the family company, he managed to convince his father that he was not cut out to be a publisher. He subsequently joined A.W. Bruna & Zoon as a designer in 1951. Two years later, he married Irene de Jongh and the couple went on to have three children: Sierk (1954), Marc (1958) and Madelon (1961). (The first of Dick Bruna's six grandchildren was born in 1992.) In 1968, Dick stopped designing book covers and withdrew entirely from his father’s publishing company. His brother Frits worked for the company for many years. 



how it began

In 1943, during the Second World War, the Bruna family sought refuge in a house near the Loosdrechtse Plassen, a lake district in the heart of the Netherlands. Unable to go to school, Dick Bruna had to find a way to occupy himself all day long. It was here that he first began drawing and painting his natural surroundings. Sometimes the designers and illustrators who worked for his father’s publishing company would visit the Bruna residence. Some of them, including Rein van Looy, seized the opportunity to give the young artist a drawing lesson. After the war, Dick designed his first book cover for the book "Anne-Marie" by Arnold Clerx. He did not complete his final year at secondary school. Instead, he spent a year working in the Broese bookshop in Utrecht. His father subsequently arranged work placements for Dick at W.H. Smith booksellers in London and at the Plon publishing company in Paris, so that he could gain experience as a publisher. However, it became increasingly clear to Dick Bruna that he was not cut out to be a publisher. In Paris, he discovered artists such as Matisse and Léger, whose work inspired him to spend more and more time drawing. Having returned to the Netherlands in 1948, he enrolled at the Rijksakademie for fine art in Amsterdam, but did not feel at home and soon dropped out. Having taught himself what he needed to know, Dick joined A.W. Bruna & Zoon as a designer in 1951 and went on to create around 2,000 book covers and posters, mainly for the Black Bear pocket editions. He also designed posters and logos for clients such as the City of Utrecht, Het Groene Kruis (a maternity care organisation), and Veilig Verkeer Nederland (a road safety organisation). He began creating picture books in 1953, eventually publishing more than 120 in total. After he stopped designing book covers, Dick continued to produce new books and did a great deal of work for worthy causes such as UNICEF, the Aids Fund and the Netherlands Foundation for Children's Welfare Stamps. Until his retirement in the summer of 2011, Dick Bruna continued to cycle to work in his studio every day. 

“Take children seriously. Be as honest with them as they are with you.”

writer, illustrator, designer

Although Dick Bruna originally wanted to become a writer, he is known primarily for his drawings, illustrations and designs. When creating his books, he first envisaged the story in pictures, before writing the text. 




strength in simplicity

How did Dick Bruna’s work come to be so famous? Is it the bright colours? (There are other illustrators who use bright colours.) Or the convenient size of his books? (There are plenty of books designed for tiny hands.) Or is it his style of drawing, in which he leaves out everything that is superfluous and ends up with a very simple picture? (Eric Carle and many others have done this, too.) Dick Bruna’s success may be attributed to all these things: he produced small books full of simple illustrations in bright colours. But the most important thing is that the pictures themselves tell the story. His drawings are much like pictograms. When he draws a house, children all over the world recognise it as a house, when he draws an apple, they recognise it as an apple, and when he draws a dog, they recognise it as a dog. You could say that Dick Bruna’s drawings speak their own language – the universal language of pictures. By making small changes to these pictograms, he created an entirely new picture. By drawing Miffy with a single tear, for instance, everyone can see that Miffy is really sad. Similarly, slight adjustments of the mouth and eyes of his characters convince us that they are happy or sad or curious. So the real secret of Dick Bruna's work is that he does more with less. 





“I have a small talent and I have to work very hard to do something with it.”

utrecht

Dick Bruna has always had a special bond with Utrecht, the city of his birth, where he worked and lived for most of his life. He still lives there, in fact, and his studio was just a stone’s throw from the city's famous Dom Cathedral. Over the years, Dick designed various posters and logos for the city, and in 1987 he was presented with the Lapel Pin of the City of Utrecht for "raising the city to new heights with his illustrious imagination". There is also a little Miffy square in Utrecht, with a bronze statue of Miffy created by Dick's son Marc. In 2006, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht opened the Dick Bruna House, which was recently renovated, reopening as the Miffy Museum in 2016. For his 70th birthday, Dick was presented with a collection of drawings by artists and illustrators from Utrecht, and the city marked his 80th birthday by decorating the streets of Utrecht with his colourful illustrations. In 2007, Dick Bruna was presented with a special Golden Lapel Pin of the city of Utrecht.



simply dick bruna

Before his retirement, Dick Bruna cycled to work in his studio every day. It wasn't uncommon to see him cycling alongside the city's canals. Even today, he enjoys cycling through his beloved Utrecht. He doesn’t look like a famous artist, but more like Miffy's grandfather: a bespectacled elderly gentleman with a friendly twinkle in his eye and a lovely white moustache. He is simply Dick Bruna. 




“For me happiness is cycling to my studio very early in the morning.”

See where Miffy was created!

Dick Bruna’s studio opens to the public in his home town of Utrecht


Fans of the children’s character, Miffy, can see where the white bunny came to life when a reconstruction of her Dutch creator’s studio opens to the public in Holland, tomorrow.
From 19 September 2015, Studio Dick Bruna will be a permanent exhibit at the Centraal Museum in his home town of Utrecht, the Netherlands, where it will serve as a backdrop for a changing selection of works from the graphic artist’s rich oeuvre.
The studio has been reassembled in an attic room at Centraal Museum, and is an exact replica of the nearby atelier in which Dick Bruna wrote and illustrated his children’s picture books during the last 30 years of his career.
He retired as an artist in 2011, having published 124 books, 33 of which feature Miffy, the character that made him a household name. Today, the Miffy stories are published in more than 50 languages.
Surrounded by personal memories, photos of memorable encounters, gifts from fans and letters from fellow artists, Dick Bruna worked in his studio every day, honing his distinctive style of illustration and typing out his stories. It was also a place where he where he relaxed while waiting for inspiration and where he entertained guests.

The interior of the reconstructed studio at the Centraal Museum has been reassembled with the original furniture: Dick Bruna’s drawing board, his desk and typewriter, and the library which includes every edition of all his published works. Every detail has been accurately recreated: the cards, the photos of friends, family and colleagues, the pencils, scissors and rulers lined up neatly on his drawing board, his personal stationery and, of course, his own work. There is even a place for the bike he rode through the streets of Utrecht on his daily journey to work. To visit the studio is to enter the world of Dick Bruna.
Display cases will show a changing selection of works from the Dick Bruna collection, which has been placed with the Centraal Museum on long-term loan. More than 7,000 works in the collection range from book covers for the Black Bear paperbacks to designs for humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross and, of course, his popular storybooks.
Dick Bruna started drawing and painting at a young age. He designed thousands of book covers and posters for the publishing company founded by his great-grandfather, A.W. Bruna & Zoon. He also produced many works on commission. While in Paris at the end of the 1940s he was inspired by artists such as Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger. This led him to develop his own distinct style, which is characterised by its simplicity, clarity and understated humour. He experimented with collage, simplification of line and blocks of colour. When designing book covers he worked freely, incorporating newspaper cuttings, photos and pieces of wrapping paper in his creative and original images. It was this same freedom that led him to create his first picture books in the 1950s.
No matter whether he was designing a book cover for one of the Havank paperbacks in the Zwarte Beertjes series, children’s books such as the apple or Miffy, a poster for the Dutch Dairy Board or a card for the World Peace Is Possible movement, Dick Bruna always managed to convey the essence of his subject matter through his simple clear design. Dutch design is characterised by simplicity and clarity. Dick Bruna’s work is consistent with this tradition. The elimination of all superfluous details, reducing the image to its most basic elements is the hallmark of his style.

60 Years of Miffy
The opening of Dick Bruna’s studio at the Centraal Museum in 2015 coincides with the 60th anniversary of the first appearance of Miffy, which is being celebrated throughout the year. Visit the official Miffy website for more information: www.miffy.com





Dick Bruna obituary

Creator of Miffy, the little rabbit who became a star of children’s literature


Julia Eccleshare

Friday 17 February 2017 15.41 GMT


Dick Bruna, the prolific Dutch illustrator and author, who has died aged 89, is best known as the creator of the iconic, minimalist figure of Nijntje, known in English as Miffy. Miffy first appeared in Dutch illustrated books for the very young, but now graces merchandise for every age group the world over, as well as greeting visitors to her home country from the walls of Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.
Appearing first in 1955, in a picture book based on a story Bruna told his young son during a holiday, after they had seen a rabbit, Miffy is a simply drawn little bunny in a dress, shown only in outline, on a white page. Her house is white with scarlet shutters. Miffy remained unchanged in the many subsequent titles, although there is sometimes a scarf or hat, or outlines filled with a solid primary colour to show a change of outfit. Initially, and until the books were translated into English, the character was just a small rabbit; the gender was not defined. The most important feature of the books, Bruna said, was that “Miffy is always Miffy and a house is always a house”.

Even Miffy’s face remains apparently constant, with black dots of eyes and a cross of a mouth, although occasionally there is an addition, such as a tear. But, by an infinitesimal tilt of her head, shutting of her eyes or the position of her head in a room or a landscape, Bruna gave Miffy a full range of responses as she did all the things familiar to pre-school children, such as celebrating a birthday, going to the zoo, visiting a playground or going to the seaside.

Miffy’s life is stylised and idealised, and the jaunty tone of the rhyming couplets which map out the story that the illustrations tell so eloquently adds to the upbeat feel of the books, which are reassuring to children and adults alike. From the moment of her birth, heralded in the original Miffy title by the arrival of an angel just when the rabbit mother has thought what a nice thing it would be to cook for three, Miffy glides apparently effortlessly and gracefully through the always busy and sometimes tempestuous years of a toddler. In his stylistically cool illustrations, Bruna warmheartedly celebrated the apparently minor but nonetheless significant milestones of the very young by cleverly fusing visual sophistication with emotional simplicity.
Describing how he worked, Bruna said: “For a book of 12 pictures I make at least a hundred.” Each was drawn with a paintbrush specially trimmed by Bruna; as he got older, and despite the success of all his books, he said it got harder and harder to get the image exactly right. Miffy’s eyes and mouth were especially problematic: “That’s all you have. With two dots and a little cross I have to make her happy, or just a little bit happy, a little bit cross or a little bit sad – and I do it over and over again. There is a moment when I think yes, now she is really sad. I must keep her like that.”
Bruna was born in Utrecht, the son of Johanna Erdbrink and Albert Bruna, and the intention was that he should join the family publishing firm, AW Bruna & Zoon. But Bruna, having been sent to Paris and London to learn about publishing and bookselling, including a brief spell working for WH Smith, opted instead to train as a graphic designer. He had been a keen artist throughout his childhood, especially during the second world war years, when his family lived in the Dutch countryside and he did not go to school, educating himself instead by studying the art of Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
He studied briefly at art school in Amsterdam for six months before leaving to join the family firm in 1951. There he worked as a designer and illustrator, creating more than 100 posters and 2,000 book jackets, including, most famously and distinctively, the covers for Georges Simenon’s Maigret titles in the 1960s, with a black pipe superimposed on a variety of backgrounds.
Bruna’s first picture book, De Appel (The Apple), was published in Holland in 1953; in 1955 came the first two Miffy titles, Miffy and Miffy at the Zoo, and success swiftly followed. From 1963 onwards Bruna created all his books (and reissued his original Miffy titles) in what was to become their trademark small, square format. By now the father of three children, he had realised that the simpler and more direct you could make a book, the better, and that the smaller format was a more manageable size for the very young.
Miffy first appeared in English in 1964 in a UK edition and the title was published almost simultaneously across Europe and in Japan (where Miffy is Usako). Bruna’s other titles included a series of adventures about a little dog named Snuffy (Snuffie in the Dutch original), retellings of traditional tales and the I Can series of books. All of these retained Bruna’s distinctive style and palette, influenced by the work of Matisse and Picasso, which Bruna had discovered while in Paris, and by the graphic design of the De Stijl movement in Holland. His books had a European flavour, while managing to remain non-specific in terms of either time or place.








Dick Bruna’s style was influenced by Matisse, Picasso and the graphic design of the De Stijl movement.
Pinterest
 Dick Bruna’s style was influenced by Matisse, Picasso and the graphic design of the De Stijl movement. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

Overall, Bruna wrote and illustrated more than 120 titles and sold more than 85 million books in more than 50 languages. His images, those of Miffy in particular, have found fame and influence well beyond their origins.
Bruna won many prizes, including the Golden Brush award for Boris Bear in 1990 and the Silver Slate for Dear Grandma Bunny in 1997. Bruna was especially fond and proud of the latter, the story of the death of Miffy’s grandmother. In 2016, he was awarded the Max Velthuijs prize, an oeuvre award for children’s book illustrators presented once every three years. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands also bestowed royal honours on Bruna. In 1983, he was made a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau and in 2001 a Knight Commander in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands.
The Miffy business, based in the Netherlands, became a huge international success. In 2006, for Miffy’s 50th birthday, she and Bruna were honoured by the setting up of the Dick Bruna Huis, a permanent collection of the artist’s work, in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht; the city is also home to a square named after Miffy and graced by a bronze statue of the rabbit, made by Bruna’s son Marc.
In 2016, the Dick Bruna Huis was developed into the Miffy Museum, catering specifically for children aged between two and six. Across the road, at the Centraal Museum, a true-to-life rendition of Bruna’s studio in the Jeruzalemstraat, where he worked every day for 30 years, opened in 2015.
Bruna married Irene de Jongh in 1953 and she remained his primary critic: Bruna created hundreds of sketches for each Miffy he drew and it was Irene who had the final say as to which books were good enough to go ahead. They continued to live in Utrecht, where Bruna worked well into his 80s. Despite his very great fame and wealth, he lived a simple and routine life entirely structured around his drawing.
He is survived by his wife, two sons, Sierk and Marc, daughter, Madelon, and six grandchildren.
 Dick (Hendrik Magdalenus) Bruna, artist and writer, born 23 August 1927; died 16 February 2017

THE GUARDIAN







MIFFY BY NUMBERS
118 Miffy books have been published to date.
10,000 products have been created by the 250 Miffy licensees throughout the world.
89 million Miffy picture books have been sold worldwide since her birth in 1955.
15.5cm is the length of each side of Bruna's Miffy books. They are designed to help small hands handle them.
2,000 The number of covers Dick Bruna designed for his father's publishing house.
5 The basic Bruna palette: red, blue, yellow, white and green.
£150 million Miffy's annual income.
1,200 works are currently on show at the dick bruna huis in Utrecht.
12 The number of pages in every Miffy book.


viernes, 3 de febrero de 2017

Charles Bukowski


KISS
Bukowski / Shoes
Bukowski / The Laughing Heart
Bukowski / Bluebird
Bukowski / The Genius of the Crowd
Bukowski / Tonigh
Bukowski / A Note Upon Modern Poetry
Bukowski / Poetry
Bukowski / I'm in Love
Bukowski / Rhyming Poem
Buwoski / I Made a Mistake
Bukowski / To the Whore Who Took My Poems
Bukowski / Girl in a Miniskirt Reading the Bible
Bukowski / There are worse things than being alone
Bukowski / Somebody
Bukowski / So Now?
Bukowski / The Great Lover
Bukowski / The Shoelace
Bukowski / Rain
Bukowski / As the Poems Go
Bukowski / How to be a great writer
Bukowski / The best love poem I can write at the moment
Bukowski / This kind of fire

DE OTROS MUNDOS
CUENTOS

POEMAS

FICCIONES



Charles Bukowski
(1920 - 1994)

American author of the second wave Beat Generation, noted for his stories of survival and heavy drinking on the fringe of society. Before starting his career as a writer, Bukowski worked in menial jobs and as a journalist at Harlequin and Laugh Literature. He was described by Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre as America's 'greatest poet'. However, the author refused to meet Sartre - he had his bottle to take care of.


"There are so many," she said, "who go by the name of poet. But they have no training, no feeling for their craft. The savages have taken over the castle. There's no workmanship, no care, simply a demand to be accepted. And these new poet all seem to admire one another. It worries me and I've talked about it to a lot of my poet friends. All a young poet seems to think he needs is a typewriter and a few pieces of paper. They aren't prepared, they have had no preparation at all." (from Hot Water Music, 1995)


              Heinrich Karl (Henry Charles) Bukowski, Jr. was born in Andernach in Germany, the son of Henry Bukowski, a US soldier, and Katharina Fett, a German woman. His family emigrated to the United States in 1922, and settled in Los Angeles, where Bukowski spent most of his life. The city became an integral part of his writing. Bukowski's father was in and out of work during the Depression years, regularly beating the boy. "I had to sleep on my belly at night because of the pain."
              Bukowski depicted his childhood in HAM ON RYE (1982), portarying his father as a cruel, shiny bastard with bad breath. He died in 1958. To shield himself, Bukowski began his life-long occupation with alcohol in his youth. He also suffered from acne – the boils were "the size of apples" – which left scars on his face. During the school years Bukowski read widely, he was especially impressed by Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Carson McCullers, and D.H. Lawrence.
             After graduating from Los Angeles High School, Bukowski studied for a year at Los Angeles City College, taking courses in journalism and literature. He left home in 1941 – his father had read his stories and threw his possessions onto the lawn. However, Bukowski still returned to his parents' house when he was totally broke. During World War II Bukowski lived the life of a wondering hobo and skid row alcoholic. He travelled across America, working in odd jobs: petrol station attendant, lift operator, lorry driver, and an overman in a dog biscuit factory. At the age of thirty-five he began to write poetry.
             In 1944 his story 'Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip' was published in Story. He returned to Los Angeles and met Janet Cooney Baker, with whom he lived the next decade. She was ten years older than Bukowski and also drank heavily. She died in 1962. Bukowski started to work at a post office in 1952 – this period lasted three years. He was then hospitalized with an alcohol-induced bleeding ulcer and came close to death. "If you are going to write, you have to have something to write about," Bukowski once said. "The gods were good. They kept me on the street." Bukowski also claimed that ninety-three per cent of his work was autobiography.
              Bukowski's marriage with Barbara Frye, the rich publisher of a small poetry magazine, lasted two years. Barbara published in her Harlequin magazine Bukowski's poems and he wrote several poems about her. In 1958 Bukowski began his twelve years work as a Post Office clerk. The salary was bad but Bukowski needed the money. He lived some years with Frances Smith; they had one daughter, Marina Louise.
             In 1955 Bukowski began writing poetry, publishing volumes almost annually. His first collection, FLOWER, FIST AND BESTIAL WAIL, was printed in 1959. It was 30 pages long and the print run was only 200. Bukowski's early poems have much in common with the work of Robinson Jeffers. He admired strength and endurance, and featured violent and sexual confrontations between men and women. Bukowski's first volume of prose, ALL ASSHOLES IN THE WORLD AND MINE, came out seven years later. One of his publishers in the 1960s was Jon Edgar Webb from The Outsider magazine, which published works from such writers as Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and William Burroughs. Gradually Bukowski established a loyal following for his depictions of down-and-out people. "A persistent rumor for many years declared that those gusty poems signed with his name were actually written by a nasty old lady with hairy armpits," said Arnold Kaye in Literary Times (1963).
              Bukowski shifted in poetry from introspection to more expressionistic writing, as seen in AT TERROR STREET AND AGONY WAY (1968) and THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILL (1969). His columns, The Notes of a Dirty Old Man appeared in Open City and Los Angeles Free Press. The texts were later collected in a book (1969). In 1970 Bukowski left his job after the publisher John Martin of the Black Sparrow Press had offered him $100 a month for life to write full time. In the same year Linda King entered Bukowski's life; she was 20 years younger. The tumultuous relationship ended in the mid-1970s.
               As his social situation changed, Bukowski's poems no longer engaged the adventures of an outcast, but became meditative and sarcastic comments on his surroundings, trips to the race track or his daily routines. Although prolific, Bukowski remained a literary outsider who published his works with small presses, primarily on the West Coast. In 1973 Bukowski gained a wider audience when an award-winning television documentary by Taylor Hackford was shown.
              Bukowski's alter ego in the books, Henry Chinaski, has its literary roots in Dostoyevsky's underground man and Louis-Ferdinand Céline´s protagonists. Chinaski is a tough, hard-drinking womanizer, a kind of Mike Hammer-ish narrator, who lives with the bums and criminals, sometimes also visiting high society. The character was introduced in the autobiographical CONFESSIONS OF A MAN INSANE ENOUGH TO LIVE WITH THE BEASTS (1965). Chinaski's adventures were further chronicled in the novels POST OFFICE (1971), in which he survives the tyrannical nature of paid labor, FACTOTUM (1975), WOMEN (1978), and HAM ON RYE (1982), in which Chinaski returns to his childhood and youth.
             Bukowski married in 1985 Linda Lee Beighle, a health food proprietor twenty-five years his junior. They had met in 1976. This also started a more balanced period of his life. Towards the end of his days, the author lived in a house with a swimming pool, drove a black BMW, wrote on a computer, and listened to records of his favorites: Sibelius, Mahler, and Rossini. A longstanding friend of Raymond Carver, Bukowski was numbered among the original 'dirty realists'. THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS (1992) was Bukowski's last book published in his lifetime. It consisted of reflections of people who have passed from his life, and forward visions of his death. Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994 in Los Angeles. The actor and director Sean Penn dedicated his film The Crossing Guard (1995) to Bukowski.
            Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) was the first film adaptation of Bukowski's stories. Directed by Marco Ferreri and starring Ben Gazarra and Ornella Muti, it depicted a drunken poet who is obsessed by sex but can't find a happy relationship with his women. The script drew material from EJACULATIONS, EXHIBITIONS, AND GENERAL TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS (1972). Another film, Barfly (1987), directed by Barbet Schroeder and starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, was about a writer, who meets a lush who takes him under her wings. Bukowski documented the making of the movie in his novel HOLLYWOOD (1989). Crazy Love / Love is a Dog from Hell (1989) was based on 'The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, Calif.', collected in Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness and later published in THE MOSTBEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN TOWN & OTHER STORIES (2001). The film was directed by Dominique Deruddere, starring Josse de Pauw, Geert Hunaerts, Michael Pas, Gene Bervoets. In the story a frustrated boy, full of romantic longing, grows up to be a necrophiliac. Lune Froinde (1991), directed by Patrick Bouchitey, starring Patrick Bouchitey, Jean-Francois Stévenin, Laura Favali, was based on Bukowski's stories from the same collection.







Death 



Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994, in San Pedro, California, aged 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. The funeral rites, orchestrated by his widow, were conducted by Buddhist monks. An account of the proceedings can be found in Gerald Locklin's book Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington: "Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: 'not' to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it." 

In 2007 and 2008 there was a movement to save Bukowski's bungalow at 5124 De Longpre Ave. from destruction. The campaign was spearheaded by preservationist Lauren Everett. The cause was covered extensively in the local and international press, including a feature in David S. Wills's Beatdom magazine, and was ultimately successful. The bungalow subsequently was listed as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument called Bukowski Court. The cause was criticized by some as cheapening Bukowski's "outsider" reputation. 



Work 

Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. These poems and stories were later republished by Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins/ECCO) as collected volumes of his work. In the 1980s he collaborated with illustrator Robert Crumb on a series of comic books, with Bukowski supplying the writing and Crumb providing the artwork. 

Bukowski also performed live readings of his works, beginning in 1962 on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles and increasing in frequency through the 1970s. Drinking was often a featured part of the readings, along with a combative banter with the audience. By the late 1970s Bukowski's income was sufficient to give up live readings. His last international performance was in October 1979 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was released on DVD as There's Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here. In March 1980 he gave his very last reading at the Sweetwater club in Redondo Beach, which was released as Hostage on audio CD and The Last Straw on DVD. 

Bukowski often spoke of Los Angeles as his favorite subject. In a 1974 interview he said, "You live in a town all your life, and you get to know every bitch on the street corner and half of them you have already messed around with. You've got the layout of the whole land. You have a picture of where you are.... Since I was raised in L.A., I've always had the geographical and spiritual feeling of being here. I've had time to learn this city. I can't see any other place than L.A." 

One critic has described Bukowski's fiction as a "detailed depiction of a certain taboo male fantasy: the uninhibited bachelor, slobby, anti-social, and utterly free", an image he tried to live up to with sometimes riotous public poetry readings and boorish party behaviour. Since his death in 1994 Bukowski has been the subject of a number of critical articles and books about both his life and writings. His work has received relatively little attention from academic critics. ECCO continues to release new collections of his poetry, culled from the thousands of works published in small literary magazines. According to ECCO, the 2007 release The People Look Like Flowers At Last will be his final posthumous release as now all his once-unpublished work has been published. 

In June 2006 Bukowski's literary archive was donated by his widow to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Copies of all editions of his work published by the Black Sparrow Press are held at Western Michigan University which purchased the archive of the publishing house after its closure in 2003. 




Film Depictions 

Bukowski: Born Into This, a film documenting the author's life, was released in 2003. It features contributions from Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton and Bono (U2's song "Dirty Day" was dedicated to Bukowski when released in 1993). 

In 1981, the Italian director Marco Ferreri made a film, Storie di ordinaria follia aka Tales of Ordinary Madness, loosely based on the short stories of Bukowski; Ben Gazzara played the role of Bukowski's character. 

Barfly, released in 1987, is a semi-autobiographical film written by Bukowski and starring Mickey Rourke as Henry Chinaski, who represents Bukowski, and Faye Dunaway as his lover Wanda Wilcox. Sean Penn had offered to play the part of Chinaski for as little as a dollar as long as his friend Dennis Hopper would provide direction, but the European director Barbet Schroeder had invested many years and thousands of dollars in the project and Bukowski felt Schroeder deserved to make it. Bukowski wrote the screenplay for the film and appears as a bar patron in a brief cameo. 

Also in 1987 a small Belgian film called Crazy Love came out, with script co-written by Bukowski himself. The film was loosely based upon 3 frequently-told episodes from his life. 

A film adaptation of Factotum, starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, and Marisa Tomei, was released in 2005. 
In 2011, the actor James Franco publicly stated that he is in the process of making a film adaptation of Bukowski's novel Ham on Rye. He is currently writing the script with his brother David Franco and explained that his reason for wanting to make the film is because "Ham on Rye is one of my favorite books of all time."




For further reading: Charles Bukowski: A Critical and Bibliographical Study by Hugh Fox (1969); A Bibliography of Charles Bukowski by Sanford Dorbin (1969); Bukowski: Friendship, Fame, and Bestial Myth by Jory Sherman (1982); A Chales Bukowski Checklist, ed. by Jeffrey Weinberg; Hank: The Life of Charles Bukowski by Neeli Cherkovski (1991); Against the American Dream by R. Harrison (1994); A Sure Bet by G. Locklin (1995); Charles Bukowski by G. Brewer (1997); Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes, Charles Bukowski (1999); The Hunchback of East Hollywood by Aubrey Malone (2003); Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993 by Charles Bukowski, David Stephen Calonne (2003)


Selected works:
  • FLOWER, FIST, AND BESTIAL WAIL, 1959
  • LONGSHOT POEMS FOR BROKE PLAYERS, 1962
  • POEMS AND DRAWINGS, 1962
  • RUN WITH THE HUNTED, 1962
  • IT CATCHES MY HEART IN ITS HANDS, 1963
  • CONFESSIONS OF A MAN INSANE ENOUGH TO LIVE WITH BEASTS, 1965
  • CRUSIFIX IN THE DEATHHAND, 1965
  • ALL THE ASSHOLES IN THE WORLD AND MINE, 1966
  • THE GENIUS OF THE CROWD, 1966
  • AT TERROR STREET AND AGONY WAY, 1968
  • POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE JUMPING OUT OF AN 8 STORY WINDOW, 1968
  • NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN, 1969
  • THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS, 1969
  • FIRE STATION, 1970
  • POST OFFICE, 1971
  • ME AND YOUR SIMETIMES LOVE POEMS, 1972
  • MOCKINGBIRD WISH ME LUCK, 1972
  • EJACULATIONS, EXHIBITIONS, AND GENERAL TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS, 1972 - films: Storie di ordinaria follia / Tales of Ordinary Madness, 1981, dir. by Marco Ferreri, starring Ben Gazzara, Ornella Muti, Susan Tyrrell, Tanya Lopert, Roy Brocksmith; Crazy Love, 1987, prod. Multimedia, dir. by Dominique Deruddere, starring Josse De Pauw, Geert Hunaerts, Michael Pas, Gene Bervoets; Lune froide, 1988 (short film), dir. by Patrick Bouchitey, starring Patrick Bouchitey, Karine Nuris, Jean-François Stévenin; Lune froide / Copulating Mermaid of Venice, 1991, dir. by Patrick Bouchitey, starring Jean-François Stévenin, Patrick Bouchitey, Jean-Pierre Bisson, Consuelo De Haviland
  • LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CHARITY WARD, 1973
  • SOUTH OF NO NORTH: STORIES OF THE BURIED LIFE, 1973
  • BURNING IN WATER, DROWNING IN FLAME: SELECTED POEMS 1955-1973, 1973
  • LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CHARITY WARD, 1974
  • BURNING IN WATER DROWNING IN FLAME, 1974
  • FACTORUM, 1975 - film: 2005, dir. by Bent Hamer, starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei -
  • LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL, 1977
  • WOMEN, 1978 - Naisia (suom. Rauno Ekholm, 1981)
  • SHAKESPEARE NEVER DID THIS, 1979
  • PLAY THE PIANO DRUNK/LIKE A PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT/UNTIL THE FINGERS  
  • BEGIN TO BLEED A BIT, 1979
  • DANGLING IN THE TOURNEFORTIA, 1981
  • HAM ON RYE, 1982 - Siinä sivussa (suom. Seppo Loponen, 1991)
  • BRING ME YOUR LOVE, 1983 (with R. Crumb)
  • HOT WATER MUSIC, 1983
  • THE BUKOWSKI-PURDY LETTERS, 1983
  • THERE'S NO BUSINESS, 1984 (with Robert Crumb)
  • UNDER THE INFLUENCE, 1984
  • WAR ALL THE TIME, 1984 - Jatkuvaa sotaa: runoja 1977-1984 (suom. Seppo Lahtinen, 2001)
  • THE MOVIE: BARLY, 1984 screenplay for the 1987 film, prod. Golan-Globus Productions, dir. by Barbet Schroeder, starring Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige
  • ALONE IN THE TIME OF ARMIES, 1985
  • THE DAY IT SNOWED IN L.A., 1986
  • YOU GET SO ALONE AT TIMES THAT IT JUST MAKES SENSE, 1986 - Eläkeläinen Kaliforniasta: runoja 1984-1990 (suom. Seppo Lahtinen, 2004)
  • GOLD IN YOUR EYE, 1986
  • LUCK, 1987
  • THE ROOMINGHOUSE MADRIGALS: EARLY SELECTED POEMS 1946-66, 1988
  • THE MOVIE CRITICS, 1988
  • HOLLYWOOD, 1989 - Hollywood (suom. Kristiina Rikman, 1992)
  • WE AIN'T GOT NO MONEY, HONEY, BUT WE GOT RAIN, 1990
  • SEPTUAGENARIAN STEW: STORIES & POEMS, 1990
  • IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE, 1991
  • THE LAST NIGHT OF THE EARTH POEMS, 1992
  • SUPPOSEDLY FAMOUS, 1992
  • RUN WITH THE HUNTED: A CHARLES BUKOWSKI READER, 1993
  • SCREAMS FROM THE BALCONY: SELECTED LETTERS 1960-1970. VOLUME 1, 1993 (edited by Seamus Cooney)
  • PULP, 1994 - Pulp (suom. Markku Into, 2000)
  • LIVING ON LUCK: SELECTED LETTERS 1960s-1970s. VOLUME 2, 1995 (edited by Seamus Cooney)
  • SHAKESPEARE NEVER DID THIS (Augmented edition), 1995
  • BETTING ON THE MUSE, 1996
  • BONE PALACE BALLET, 1997
  • THE CAPTAIN IS OUT TO LUNCH AND THE SAILORS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE SHIP, 1998 (illustrated by Robert Crumb) - Lounaalla (suom. Seppo Lahtinen, 1999)
  • REACH FOR THE SUN: SELECTED LETTERS 1978-1994. VOLUME 3, 1999 (edited by Seamus Cooney)
  • WHAT MATTERS MOST IS HOW WELL YOU WALK THROUGH THE FIRE, 1999
  • OPEN ALL NIGHT: NEW POEMS, 2000
  • POPCORN IN THE DARK, 2000
  • THE MOSTBEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN TOWN & OTHER STORIES, 2001
  • THE NIGHT TORN MAD WITH FOOTSTEPS, 2001
  • PINK SILKS, 2001
  • THE SIMPLE TRUTH, 2002
  • SIFTING THROUGH THE MADNESS FOR THE WORLD, THE LINE, THE WAY, 2003
  • SUNLIGHT HERE I AM: INTERVIEWS & ENCOUNTERS, 1963-1993 (edited by David Stephen Calonne)
  • AS BUDDHA SMILES, 2004
  • THE FLASH OF LIGHTNING BEHIND THE MOUNTAIN, 2004
  • SLOUCHING TOWARD NIRVANA, 2005
  • COME ON IN!, 2006
  • THE PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED: POEMS 1951-1993, 2007 (edited by John Martin)

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bukowski.htm
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