I’m sitting in the coffee shop and hearing a man talking to himself. There’s nothing to see her. Just keep moving.

Anyway, I’ll take this time to thank the writers who’ve come before me.

I remember going to a company party on July Fourth when I was in my twenties—close to twenty years ago. Everyone except my friend and I sat at the pool or the jacuzzi on a hot day. We perused the bookshelf inside the house in Lawndale, a trashy little town a little south of Los Angeles.

My friend plucked a book from the shelf called Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski.

“You got to read this guy,” he said. “It’s so easy to read.”

I’d read some of Bukowski in college. A roommate had kept a book of poems on the toilet in our dorm, and I remember turning it to a page where Bukowski described a trip to Bakersfield, where I lived through high school and some of college.

My friend flipped it to a page for a short story for me to read. It was about a random couple that would have sex in the apartment elevator at random times. The story lasted maybe ten pages if that, but it was largely entertaining.

I became addicted to Bukowski after that story. It was cinematic the way it was written.

Bukowski had a knack for introducing other writers. I learned about Celine, Hamsun, Hemingway, Fante, and those were just the novelists. And I tried to read all of their books but couldn’t quite make it.

Celine was too esoteric for my liking, so I never finished a book of his.

Hamsun’s Hunger is considered to be a classic among certain readers. I read it the whole way through, waiting for a payoff that wouldn’t come, but I still respected the writing.

Hemingway was Hemingway: direct, humorless, way too serious.

Fante was Bukowski without the obscenities. I think I read all of his books except for a few. Ask the Dust was really good. I even saw the movie, which starred the Irish actor Colin Farrell. He wouldn’t have been my first choice. The main character was Italian.

Anyway, those are some of my favorite writers. I don’t celebrate a genre. I could read Thurber one day and Vonnegut the next. Some days, I’m in the mood for a good detective novel, although The Big Sleep was too slangy for me with too many weird metaphors.

My favorite Bukowski book is Ham on Rye. It’s about his childhood. In the documentary Born This Way, Charles described it as a horror story. I could see where he would say that. His childhood, if he’d portrayed it accurately, did sound horrific.

I wouldn’t put Post Office far behind Ham on Rye if it’s my second favorite book of his. Factotum might be. They made a film out of that as well, starring Matt Dillon as the Bukowski character. Again, he wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it was close enough, I guess.

I haven’t read Bukowski in many years. I’ve exhausted his books and want to discover someone else with a voice I really love, but I have yet to find that person.

But I do love what Jane Bowles had written. Two Serious Ladies is a book I would recommend to everyone. I just looked her up online. It was her only novel. She’d written mostly short stories and a play. So she’s someone I would want to explore further once I’m done with my reading list, which is arduous. Most of the writing, these so-called classics, has been painful to get through. I don’t recommend anything besides Bowles thus far.