Reach for the Sun Selected Letters, 1978-1994

"The older I get the more I seem to explode with words, " the 71-year-old Bukowski wrote in 1991 to his longtime friend and publisher, John Martin. Volume 3 of Bukowski's selected letters reverberates with interesting aftershocks of Buk's last blasts. These lively, candid, funny and generous letters -- often written in the small hours of the morning, and addressed to magazine editors, publishers, fans and fellow writers -- give away quite a bit more than do most literary correspondences. Bukowski the detester of "fakers" has never been more real than here, nor more self-revealing.