Many believe that Charles Bukowski was an anomaly––and he certainly was to a degree––but what a lot of folks overlook is that the late writer and poet was very much a student of the game. In a poem titled, The First love, he writes...

"I had my own bedroom but at 8 p.m. we were all supposed to go to sleep: 'Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,' my father would say. 'Lights out!' he would shout. Then I would take the bed lamp place it under the covers and with the heat and the hidden light I would continue to read: Ibsen, Shakespeare, Chekov, Jeffers, Thurber, Conrad Aiken, others. They brought me chance and hope and feeling in a place of no chance, no hope, no feeling. I worked for it. It got hot under the covers. Sometimes the lamp would begin to smoke on the sheets––there would be a burning; then I'd switch the lamp off, hold it outside to cool off."

Bukowski's writing gives the impression that he did not give a flying fuck but I can assure you a man who grew up reading Shakespeare and Chekov most certainly gave a fuck. Make no mistake, Bukowski was a student of the game.