SOURCE: "Notes on a Dirty Old Man," in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 5, No. 3, Fall, 1985, pp. 60–3.

In the essay below, Kessler defends Bukowski's writing from attacks by the literary establishment, arguing that his work displays "an increasingly persuasive truthfulness, a sense of honest simplicity which makes his books easy to read, offensive to some, sad and funny—in short, lifelike."

Hugh Fox on the two sides of Bukowski's poetry:

[A] kind of duality goes on in his poetry. I hate to say that the "real" Bukowski is a Bretonish surrealist, although there is a Bukowski who gets surrealistic and writes about the day it rained at the L.A. country museum, about the Nor'wester that "ripped the sheets like toe-nails," about an "Alkaseltzer Mass." The other Bukowski is all 300 pound whores (or any variety of whore), rundown bars, rundown apartments, beer, the D.T.'s, jail, slugging...