Charles Bukowski Movies and Career Information

Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was heavily influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambiance of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually having over 60 books in print. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". He was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, to Heinrich Bukowski and Katharina Fett. His mother was a native German and his father was a Polish-American soldier who met her after World War I had ended. Bukowski's parents were Roman Catholic. He often claimed to be an illegitimate child; Andernach marital records, however, indicate that his parents married one month prior to his birth. Due to the collapse of the German economy following the end of World War I, the family emigrated to the United States in 1923 and initially settled in Baltimore, Maryland. Wanting a more Anglophone kind of