Cultural Writing. VISCERAL BUKOWSKI is a memoir of a 20-year friendship with deep insights into the personal life of Charles Bukowski and the city of Los Angeles. Here are clear chapters on childhood friends, Bukowski's flirtation with Nazism, how Pleasants and Bukowski together rediscover John Fante, adventures in Hollywood, the women, the jobs, the booze and the writing; the way it really happened without the fiction. A strikingly rich portrayal of Bukowski, a poet, who was "alive and glowing in his place in time"--Los Angeles Times.