This collection is based around Bukowski finishing work at the post office in the late 1960s and finishing the script for "Barfly" in 1980, by which time he was an international celebrity. All the facets of his life come through in these letters - to women, editors, his German translator, fellow novelists and poets. His major prose works such as "Ham on Rye" and "Factotum" find their first shapes here, and readers should enjoy his championing of literary heroes like Celine and Fante, and his rubbishing of "dry as dust fakers" such as Stevens and Tate.