Back in L.A., there was almost a week of peace. Then the phone rang. It was the owner of a Manhattan Beach nightclub, Marty Seavers. I had read there a couple of times before. The club ...

sitting with the professors we talk about Allen Tate and John Crow Ransom the rugs are clean and the coffeetables shine

in the winter walking on my ceiling my eyes the size of street… I have 4 feet like a mouse but wash my own underwear—bearded and hungover and a hard-on and no lawy…

the guy in the front court can’t speak English, he’s Greek, a rather stupid-looking and fairly ugly man. now my landlord does some painting…

I don’t know how many bottles of b… I have consumed while waiting for… to get better. I don’t know how much wine and whi… and beer

beheaded in the middle of the night scratching my sides I am covered with bites kick my white legs out of the shee…

the canaries were there, and the l… and the old woman with warts; and I was there, a child and I touched the piano keys as they talked—

When I awakened it was 1:30 pm. I took a bath, got dressed, checked the mail. A letter from a young man in Glendale. "Dear Mr. Chinaski: I am a young writer and I think that I am a good...

I saw Sara every three or four days, at her place or at mine. We slept together but there was no sex. We came close but we never quite got to it. Drayer Baba’s precepts held strong. We ...

love, he said, gas kiss me off kiss my lips kiss my hair my fingers

dying for a beer dying for and of life on a windy afternoon in Hollywood listening to symphony music from m… on the floor.

the dead can sleep they don’t get up and rage they don’t have a wife. her white face like a flower in a closed

Graduation Day. We filed in with our caps and gowns to “Pomp and Circumstance.” I suppose that in our three years we must have learned something. Our ability to spell had probably impro...

Four or five days passed. The phone rang. It was Tammie. “Listen, Hank. You know that little bridge you cross in your car when you drive to my mother’s place?” “Well, right by there the...

Abe Mortenson was had enough to be around but he was just a fool. You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn’t deceive anybody. It’s the deceivers who make y...