Although this quote reads like a description of Hollywood and its celluloid environs, the author is reviewing Run With the Hunted: A. Charles Bukowski Reader, a comprehensive anthology of the poet-novelist's work. From Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960), his first full-length collection of poetry, to Pulp, published shortly after his death in 1994, Bukowski chronicled the humorous, lyric, impoverished lives of prostitutes, drinkers, bums, writers, and miscreants of every description. His tales of squalor which document the starving and passionate Angeleno writer are in large measure inspired by John Fante.
Los Angeles is Buk territory. He lived in and wrote about Central Los Angeles for most of his seventy-three years. L.A. is a place where, in the realm beyond fiction, people migrate in pursuit of dreams. One category of migrant dream-seeker is the writer. Whether he/she is a neophyte seeking fortune as a screenwriter or an aging, established author reviving an endangered career, the writer confronts an industry whose interests and intents are tangential to his/her own.