Hard Without Music | Review

This time we reach for a story — one written by a man born in Germany, who lived in California and died of sudden leukemia in San Pedro after a scrambled life. It unfolds amid so much alcohol and a marginal world rendered in vivid language and extraordinary insight; amid an existence of extreme excess and contempt for respectability, two unexpected presences emerge: nuns. Charles Bukowski sketches their encounter with a man named Larry, who has placed an ad in the paper to sell a phonograph and records. The sisters are interested in buying because Sister Celia needs it for her lessons with the older girls—"it's so hard without music." Through the man's eyes, it is the meeting of two distant worlds that study each other a little, try to say something to one another, and conclude the transaction. No one is comfortable. But we know this: these are the best kinds of encounters.