Point of View

The point of view varies from story to story. The majority of the stories, including all of those which feature Bukowski himself as the narrator, are told from the first-person perspective. The more abstract and fictional stories, those which contain a cast of characters that does not include Bukowski or a thinly-veiled proxy, are told from a third-person point of view. This narrator is not omniscient, although that shift (from first-person introspective to third-person limited perspective) is less jarring here than it might be for other, more emotionally engaged storytellers. Bukowski himself speaks directly to the reader at the ends of such pieces as "A Quiet Conversation Piece", "Scenes from the Big Time", and throughout the more conversational, conceptual discussions found in "Notes of a Potential Suicide", "Notes on the Pest", "A Bad Trip", and "The Big Pot Game". This direct address does not differ markedly...