Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook
The first of Calonne's City Lights recovery volumes, from 2008.
Read our takeThe Bell Tolls for No One
Charles Bukowski
The Bell Tolls for No One
An illustrated story Bukowski wrote in 1947 and never published, followed by the newspaper column and the work he sold to men's magazines in the 1980s.
- 2015
About Charles Bukowski
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe Bell Tolls for No One, published by City Lights in 2015, is the fourth collection of Charles Bukowski's uncollected prose edited by the scholar David Stephen Calonne. It runs to 305 pages and is arranged to cross his whole working life: it opens with an illustrated story from 1947 that had never been printed, moves through installments of Notes of a Dirty Old Man, the column he wrote for underground newspapers, and ends with the hard-boiled pieces he wrote for glossy adult magazines in the 1980s. Bukowski was twenty-six or twenty-seven when he wrote the first piece and in his sixties when he wrote the last.
The story, in more detail
Calonne had already edited three City Lights volumes of work that had never been collected: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook in 2008, Absence of the Hero in 2010, and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man in 2011. This is the fourth. By 2015 the easy recoveries were gone, and what remained was in places that took real searching — a manuscript nobody had printed, magazine issues held in few libraries.
The order of the contents lets a reader compare the two ends directly. The unpublished 1947 story and the magazine work of the 1980s are separated by nearly forty years and by the difference between writing for nothing and being paid well, and the manner of the writing changes far less than either of those would suggest.
Why we recommend it
An unpublished story from 1947
Written before almost anything else that survives, illustrated by Bukowski, and printed here for the first time.
The full working range in one volume
The unpublished apprentice piece, the underground column, and the paid magazine work of the 1980s, in that order.
What this book explores
Timeline
1947
Bukowski writes the illustrated story that opens the book; it goes unpublished for sixty-eight years.
1967
Notes of a Dirty Old Man begins in the underground paper Open City.
2015
City Lights publishes the volume on 28 July, edited by David Stephen Calonne.
Book editions
- Paperback
- City Lights
- 2015
- 9780872866829
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
The third, from 2011, gathering further installments of the column.
Read our take
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
The 1969 book that first selected from the column this volume returns to.
Read our takeThe Bell Tolls for No One: frequently asked questions
What is The Bell Tolls for No One?
A collection of Charles Bukowski's uncollected prose published by City Lights in 2015 and edited by David Stephen Calonne. It gathers work from 1947 through the 1980s across 305 pages.
What is the unpublished 1947 story?
An illustrated story Bukowski wrote in his mid-twenties that had never been printed. It opens the book.
How does it relate to the other City Lights collections?
It is the fourth and last of them. Calonne edited Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook in 2008, Absence of the Hero in 2010 and More Notes of a Dirty Old Man in 2011 before this one.
Where did the later pieces first appear?
In glossy adult magazines in the 1980s, which paid Bukowski for prose after he had become well known.
Where should a new reader start?
Not here. Post Office or Ham on Rye first, then the earlier City Lights collections. This book gathers what was left over after those, and it helps to already know the writing it is filling in around.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Bell Tolls for No One, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Bell Tolls for No One
NovelCharles Bukowski, 2015Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2The Bell Tolls for No One — edition record
Official recordOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forEdition record: publisher, publication date, page count and ISBN.
3The Bell Tolls for No One (City Lights publisher's page)
WebsiteCity Lights Booksellers & Publishers, 2015Used forThe publisher's description of the contents and the span the book covers.
4Charles Bukowski
BiographyReaktion Books, 2012Used forThe editor's own critical biography, and the magazine career the volume recovers.
5Charles Bukowski timeline (bukowski.net)
WebsiteUsed forPublication chronology of the uncollected-prose volumes.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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