American poet and novelist of Los Angeles rooming houses, racetracks and the post office, who quit his job to write when a publisher offered him a hundred dollars a month. He came to Paris once, in September 1978, drank his way through a live television book programme and walked off the set — and French television has been replaying it ever since.
Charles Bukowski wrote about the bottom of American working life from inside it: the rented rooms, the racetrack, the bars, and the years he spent sorting mail for the United States Post Office in Los Angeles. His first book appeared in 1959, his first novel in 1971, and more than forty-five volumes of poems, stories and novels followed, nearly all of them from one small California press.
His only appearance in Paris lasted about an hour. On 22 September 1978 he sat down on the set of Apostrophes, the weekly books programme presented by the journalist Bernard Pivot on French television, drank steadily through the broadcast, put a hand on the knee of the novelist Catherine Paysan, was twice shouted down by his fellow guest François Cavanna, and then took off his earpiece and left. The clip is one of the most replayed pieces of French television archive, and it is the reason a great many French readers know his name.
Apostrophes was a live talk show about books, presented by the journalist Bernard Pivot, who sat several writers round a table and let them argue. Bukowski's episode went out on Friday 22 September 1978. Four other guests were at the table with him, among them the novelist Catherine Paysan and the writer François Cavanna.
Bukowski drank through the programme, glass after glass, and the broadcaster's own archive describes what followed plainly enough: tipsy on set, he touched Catherine Paysan's knees, and she answered him, smiling, "ça c'est le pompon" — roughly, "well, that takes the biscuit." Cavanna twice told him to be quiet. Then Bukowski removed his earpiece and left the set, with difficulty, while the programme was still running.
Bukowski! I'm going to put my fist in your face!
Bukowski ! Je vais te foutre mon poing dans la gueule !
Pivot never let it go either. He dated the episode precisely in Le Métier de lire, the book-length interview about his career that he published with Gallimard in 1990, and he gave Bukowski his own entry in the Dictionnaire amoureux du vin sixteen years later, remembering the famous "Ta gueule, Bukowski !" from Cavanna and the hand that went wandering. The broadcaster put the clip back out in 2020 and was still updating the page in 2024.
The story has been improved in the retelling for nearly fifty years, and the improvements are worth separating out. Three bottles of white wine drunk from the neck, a knife pulled on a security guard in the street outside afterwards, an expulsion ordered by Pivot: these details travel with the anecdote but belong to later accounts of it rather than to the broadcaster's record.
What the Institut national de l'audiovisuel — the French state body that keeps the country's broadcast archive — actually holds is the drinking through the show, the hand on Catherine Paysan's knee and her reply, Cavanna's two outbursts, and Bukowski leaving the set drunk before the end.
He was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, in the German Rhineland, on 16 August 1920, the only child of an American soldier and a German mother, and was brought to the United States at the age of three. He grew up in Los Angeles, attended Los Angeles City College between 1939 and 1941, published his first story at twenty-four, and in 1946 gave up writing altogether.
A decade of heavy drinking followed. It ended with a bleeding ulcer, and the ulcer sent him back to the page: he started writing poems at thirty-five and had his first book out in 1959. To pay for the years in between he took whatever work was available: warehouses, factories, service jobs, and for the long stretch that made him, the Post Office in Los Angeles.
He read hard and unfashionably, and late in life he put the list down in a letter: "I once read almost everything. My influences are Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hamsun, Céline, Jeffers, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Gorky." Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whose Journey to the End of the Night put a Paris underclass into gutter French in 1932, is the closest thing his own low-life first person has to a model; Ernest Hemingway supplied the short flat sentence he then spent decades needling in print; Fyodor Dostoevsky came first on the list.
John Martin was a Los Angeles office-supply manager earning five hundred dollars a month when he decided to become a publisher. He sold his collection of rare books to the library of the University of California, Santa Barbara for fifty thousand dollars, founded Black Sparrow Press on the proceeds, and made Bukowski an offer: leave the post office, write full time, and take a hundred dollars a month from him. Bukowski took it and resigned.
Post Office, his first novel, followed in 1971, and Factotum in 1975. The second book has the same narrator, Henry Chinaski, drifting across wartime America from one odd job to the next, never needing money badly enough to keep one. Black Sparrow published him for the rest of his life, along with the novelist John Fante and the writer Paul Bowles, and stayed in business until 2002, when the list was sold to a New York publishing house.
The reputation arrived from the wrong direction. Bukowski's readership grew first in Germany, the country he was born in and left as a toddler, and only afterwards in the United States. In France he was known as the author of Contes de la folie ordinaire, "tales of ordinary madness", and one evening on Apostrophes carried his name far past the people who had read him.
That is the whole of his Paris story, and it is worth saying so plainly: he did not live here, did not drink here for years, and left behind no address the way the expatriate generations did. He came to promote a book, gave French television an hour it has never stopped playing, and went home to California.
He spent his last years in San Pedro, the port district at the southern end of Los Angeles, and died there of leukaemia on 9 March 1994, having published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose. The novel Pulp appeared the same year.
Born in Andernach, Germany, on 16 August, the only child of an American soldier and a German mother.
Brought to the United States at the age of three and raised in Los Angeles.
Attends Los Angeles City College for two years, then leaves for New York to write.
Gives up writing after years of rejection. A decade of heavy drinking follows and ends in a bleeding ulcer.
First appearance in book form, ten years after he had started writing poems at thirty-five.
Post Office, his first novel, is published by Black Sparrow Press after John Martin's offer of a hundred dollars a month lets him leave the postal service.
Factotum: Henry Chinaski across wartime America, one abandoned job at a time.
22 September: drinks his way through Apostrophes on French television, is twice shouted at by François Cavanna, and leaves the set before the end.
Dies of leukaemia at San Pedro, California, on 9 March, with more than forty-five books published. The novel Pulp appears the same year.
Black Sparrow Press closes and sells its list, Bukowski included, to a New York publisher.
Named by Bukowski among his influences in a letter of his last years, alongside Dostoevsky, Celine and Sherwood Anderson. The short flat sentence is the inheritance; Bukowski also spent decades needling the Hemingway legend in print, which is its own form of debt.
First on the list Bukowski gave of his own reading, in a letter of his later years: "I once read almost everything. My influences are Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hamsun, Celine, Jeffers, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Gorky."
Bukowski named him. Writing to a correspondent late in life, he set down a list: "I once read almost everything. My influences are Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hamsun, Celine, Jeffers, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Gorky." Journey to the End of the Night, Celine's 1932 novel of a Paris underclass told in gutter speech, is the closest thing Bukowski's own low-life first person has to a model.
An American poet and novelist, born in Germany in 1920 and raised in Los Angeles, who wrote about rooming houses, bars, racetracks and low-paid work from inside them. His first book appeared in 1959 and his first novel, Post Office, in 1971, and he went on to more than forty-five volumes, nearly all of them from Black Sparrow Press. He died in San Pedro, California, in 1994.
On 22 September 1978 he was a guest on Apostrophes, the live weekly books programme presented by Bernard Pivot. He drank steadily through the broadcast, interrupted the other guests, put a hand on the knee of the novelist Catherine Paysan — who replied, smiling, "ça c'est le pompon" — and was told twice by his fellow guest François Cavanna to shut up, the second time with an offer of a punch in the face. He then removed his earpiece and walked off the set while the programme was still on air.
That detail belongs to the retellings rather than to the record. The French broadcast archive documents the drinking, the hand on Catherine Paysan's knee, Cavanna's two outbursts and the unsteady exit from the set. The knife in the street, and the count of bottles emptied on air, come from later accounts and are not part of what the archive holds.
No. His connection to the city is a single visit and a single television appearance in September 1978. He left no Paris address, no café years and no expatriate circle — which is unusual for a writer this famous in France, and is exactly what makes the one broadcast carry so much weight there.
It is Bukowski's first novel, published in 1971, and it comes straight out of the job he had just left: the sorting, the delivery rounds, the supervisors and the futility of the United States Post Office in Los Angeles. He wrote it after the publisher John Martin offered him a hundred dollars a month to quit and write full time.
Published in 1975, it follows Henry Chinaski — Bukowski's recurring narrator — through wartime America, city to city, odd job to odd job. A factotum is a general handyman who does whatever needs doing, and Chinaski always needs money but never badly enough to keep a job for long.
John Martin was a Los Angeles office-supply manager who sold his rare-book collection to the University of California, Santa Barbara for fifty thousand dollars and used the money to start a publishing house. Black Sparrow Press printed Bukowski for the rest of his life, along with John Fante and Paul Bowles, and closed in 2002 when the list was sold on. The hundred dollars a month Martin promised Bukowski is why the novels exist.
His readership grew in Germany, the country of his birth, before it grew at home, and it grew in France after a single televised evening in 1978 made him a name that people who had never read him could repeat. In the United States the literary establishment kept him at arm's length for decades, treating a poet of rooming houses and racetracks as a curiosity rather than a writer.
Influenced by
Named by Bukowski among his influences in a letter of his last years, alongside Dostoevsky, Celine and Sherwood Anderson. The short flat sentence is the inheritance; Bukowski also spent decades needling the Hemingway legend in print, which is its own form of debt.
Influenced by
First on the list Bukowski gave of his own reading, in a letter of his later years: "I once read almost everything. My influences are Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hamsun, Celine, Jeffers, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Gorky."
Influenced by
Bukowski named him. Writing to a correspondent late in life, he set down a list: "I once read almost everything. My influences are Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hamsun, Celine, Jeffers, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Gorky." Journey to the End of the Night, Celine's 1932 novel of a Paris underclass told in gutter speech, is the closest thing Bukowski's own low-life first person has to a model.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Charles Bukowski and their work.
The broadcaster's catalogue record for the clip: exact transmission date, programme, and everyone on set.
INA's own account of the broadcast, with Cavanna's two lines quoted.
The presenter's book-length interview about his career, which dates the Bukowski episode.
Pivot's later recollection of the same evening, filed under Bukowski's name.
Biography from the Academy of American Poets: birth, the lost decade, the post office, the books.
His own letters, including the list of writers he named as his influences.
Obituary of the publisher John Martin, with the founding of Black Sparrow Press and the hundred-dollar offer.
Essay on Bukowski's drinking that traces the reputation growing in Germany before America.
Catalogue record and synopsis for Factotum.
Short critical biography in Reaktion's Critical Lives series; source for the birth name.
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Charles Bukowski. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
Explore more resources