Pp. 277-297 Summary

The next poem in the collection is called "you get so alone at times that it just makes sense." In it, Chinaski recalls losing fifty pounds trying to get published. As he gets thinner, he decides to focus on drinking and whoring. When he returns to the writing game, he is nearly a hundred pounds heavier and ready to go.

Chinaski celebrates his fellow drinking writers in "a good gang, after all." They have kept the faith, he says, and are always ready for the fight. On a similar theme in "this," Chinaski contends that his typewriter is a better companion than any women he can imagine.

In "hot" the author says that there is a fire in everything around him, and he is ready to write about it. Everything is burning, and that is how he likes it.

In "late...