Hot Water Music - Signed - Charles Bukowski 1983 - Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara - No. 60 of 400 signed and numbered copies. First Edition A signed first edition of what is considered one of Bukowki’s best short story collections, the other two being ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ and ‘Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness’.

‘With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his side of town in Hot Water Music. He gives us little vignettes of depravity and lasciviousness, bite sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque.

The stories in Hot Water Music dash around the worst parts of town – a motel room stinking of sick, a decrepit apartment housing a perpetually arguing couple, a bar tended by a skeleton – and depict the darkest parts of human existence. Bukowski talks simply and profoundly about the underbelly of the working class without raising judgement.

In the way he writes about sex, relationships, writing, and inebriation, Bukowski sets the bar for irreverent art – his work inhabits the basest part of the mind and the most extreme absurdity of the everyday.’ - from the
Harper Collins edition.
  Octavo (book size 23.7x16.2cm), pp. [10] 11-221 [7]. In publisher’s purple linen-backed pictorial boards, paper spine label lettered in black, cream colour paper boards with yellow/purple/red bands wrapping around front and rear boards, front board with lettering in black, pink, blue and yellow, red endpapers. Enclosed in publisher’s clear acetate cover.

References: Krumhansl,
A Descriptive Bibliography of the Primary Publications of Charles Bukowski, 80d.
Published by the Black Sparrow Press as follows (with Krumhansl’s bibliographic reference number):-
80b - 9,005 softbound copies in paper wrappers.
80c - 750 hardcover trade copies.
80d - 400 hardcover copies numbered 1-400 signed by Bukowski in the colophon.
80e - 100 special deluxe hand-bound copies numbered 1-100 with an original oil painting, signed by Bukowski in the colophon.
80f - 26 lettered special deluxe copies hand-bound by Earle Gray, with an original oil painting, signed by Bukowski in the colophon.
80f - 7 special deluxe copies ‘
not for sale’, hand-bound by Earle Gray, with an original oil painting, signed by Bukowski in the colophon.
80f - 25 special deluxe copies marked ‘
Presentation Copy’ in the colophon, hand-bound by Earle Gray, with an original oil painting, signed by Bukowski in the colophon.

Note 80a was the ‘Broadside/Flyer No. 10’ promotional poster for the book of which about 9,000 copies were issued. There were also 50 signed and numbered copies.
  Condition: Fine but for some light foxing to top edge and foreedge.   Ref: 111017   Price: HK$ 7,000