Buk's way of saying goodbye, and his take on Chandler and James M. Cain's hard-boiled L.A. fiction. Good read. ( )

This is a hilarious, absurd book. It's a caricature of detective stories and, I'm told, is full of clever allusions to Bukowski's previous work and others' he admired. I think it's also about death. It so happens that it was his last novel.This is the first thing I've ever read of his. ( )

Unconvincing and disappointing. ( )

I am a huge Bukowski fan, but I just did not like this book. I can appreciate his effort to deviate from his usual style...but I felt that his effort fell flat here. I was disappointed. ( )

This book surprised me. In the past, I've read Bukowski purely for distraction. But Pulp hit me as a truly good book. I was moved emotionally and by the craft. Bukowski doesn't overreach, trying too hard to go out with a bang, to write the great book at the end of his career. He doesn't try too hard, but he doesn't phone it in either. He strikes a balance, pushing himself, I think, but not trying to be anything he isn't. Lady Death comes to call and is a knock out, the scotch is good, if hard to drink in peace, and life for Nick Belane is flat and dreary and hopeless, like it is for most of us. But he's a thinking man, who knows thinking won't get him anywhere, not, most critically, any distance away from the metaphorical pine box. Death does come in the end for Nick, just as it did for the tough old man, CB, himself just before or after Pulp was published. This is not a book for the young; not that it's an easy read for those of us who can still hear the rat-a-tat-tat of typewriter keys echoing in the back alleys of what we call our memory. ( )