Stealing Charles Bukowski

San Francisco's most shoplifted author

Charles Bukowski and John Martin, Los Angeles, 1972

Welcome all of you new subscribers, and thanks to everyone for reading. Earlier this month the world said goodbye to publisher John Martin, a unique iconoclast and owner of Black Sparrow Press, which he founded and ran from 1966 to 2002. He kept many writers in circulation, in beautifully designed softcover editions, from Paul Bowles to John Fante, Joyce Carol Oates, and most often, poet Charles Bukowski. In 1980 he told The New York Times, “Since I am a totally literary person, I have no desire to publish anything in any other area…I want to die never having been to Las Vegas, gone to Disneyland or watched a whole TV show, except for sports.” He founded Black Sparrow specifically to publish Bukowski, who, like it or not, claimed the dubious title of most shoplifted author in San Francisco. Thanks to writer/critic (and valued reader of this space) Mark Athitakis for the reminder that I once explored this topic, and interviewed Martin about it. This piece first appeared in SF Weekly in December 1999.

Bukowski/Black Sparrow display at Lamplight Books, Seattle, 2024

Let’s say you still need to finish your Christmas shopping, but you’re pretty much broke. You’re so strapped for cash that you’re actually thinking of doing a little shopping with the five-finger discount. Maybe a simple gift, something like a book.

Before you start liberating a small library from the city’s bookstores, think about this: The book dealers are way ahead of you. They already know what you’re going to steal.

You’re not going to snatch a novel by Amy Tan or Martin Cruz Smith. You’re not reaching your sticky fingers for the latest tell-all New Media sensation by Michael Lewis or Po Bronson. In fact, you’re not considering books by other Bay Area authors like Anne Lamott, Danielle Steel, or even the venerable Herb Caen.

No, the most-stolen author in San Francisco happens to be Charles Bukowski, the bottom-feeder poet and novelist who plumbed the depths of alcohol, drugs, horse tracks, and whores. Following close behind on the most-stolen list are beat writers—Jack Kerouac, usually—and fancy, shrink-wrapped art books that thieves can quickly resell to feed their various habits.

According to a recent column by critic Ron Rosenbaum in the New York Observer, Bukowski also tops Manhattan’s list of most-stolen authors. At least one New York store, according to Rosenbaum, has even moved Bukowski books from the open shelves to a special Shoplift Lit section behind the counter, along with other most-stolen authors.

Stores here in our little hamlet have no such Shoplift Lit sections. But we do seem to share New York’s strange obsession with this particular author, at least judging by the comments of local book purveyors:

“A lot of film books, a lot of Bukowski,” says a clerk at City Lights in North Beach, when asked about local shoplifting tastes.

“I have, in the past, locked up Kerouac and Bukowski,” says Jude Sales, manager of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books.

“Always Bukowski,” says Gary Frank, of the Booksmith in the Upper Haight.

“Bukowski!” exclaims a clerk at Modern Times in the Mission. “I just had to stop someone last week, who was taking the entire section!”

“I would have to say Bukowski,” says a clerk at Green Apple Books in the Richmond.

Book merchants see two reasons for this Bukowski factor. First, it’s Bukowski. Young gutter punks looking for his seedy scenarios of lowlife Los Angeles either don’t want to pay for them, or can’t afford them.

“I guess it’s that beat mentality,” ventures Jude Sales of A Clean Well-Lighted Place. “You get what you want.”

And second, Bukowski boasts a high resale value. He’s the author whose books sell well on the street, and which people will want to buy on the street.

“The drug addicts,” says Gary Frank of the Booksmith. “They’re the worst. They just want them to sell.”

When Bukowski’s books are stolen and resold, they occasionally figure into a larger scam. Bookstore clerks recall such operations from the past several years. In at least two separate cases, undercover police posed as street people and sold books to used-book stores suspected of trafficking in pilfered goods. One theft ring, working out of the Writer’s Bookstore on Webster Street, ran for 10 years, and resold an estimated $6 million in stolen books before the thieves were arrested. Another similar scam (by one of the same thieves) operated through a Polk Street shop called Rooks and Becords, before police shut it down. In both cases, the stores supplied sticky-fingered shoplifters with wish lists of books the stores would buy.

Clerks believe another steal-and-resell scam may currently be running in the city, because certain used-book stores are stocking suspicious numbers of brand-new shrink-wrapped books.

But despite the occasional high-stakes investigations, most shoplifting cases end up going nowhere. Even with electronic detectors, theft remains a significant problem. If the thief is caught, the case is rarely worth prosecuting because the courts are so clogged. The store simply forbids the thief from ever coming back, and that’s that.

Although major chain retailers share the problem of shoplifting, it’s impossible to tell if they lose Bukowski books to thieves, because they don’t want to talk about it.

“We don't want to be involved with that,” sniffs a media contact from Borders on Union Square.

“I’m not comfortable talking about this,” says the manager of Compass Books, located in SFO airport.

When told that Bukowski seems to be the city’s most popular stolen author, the manager of Barnes & Noble at Fisherman’s Wharf replies briskly, “I don't know that I know that to be true.”

But all this discussion of theft economics and methods still doesn’t explain the appeal of Charles Bukowski. What about this man and his writing would lead someone to sneak into a store and snatch only his books?

North of San Francisco lies Santa Rosa and the offices of Black Sparrow Press. This company has been the primary publisher of Charles Bukowski since 1966, and keeps over 30 of his titles in print. Black Sparrow proprietor John Martin is also Bukowski’s editor. He’s extremely busy, shipping a new Bukowski poetry collection titled What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire, but he has a few minutes to talk.

So why does he think Bukowski is the most-stolen author in San Francisco?

“A lot of his readers are poor,” replies Martin matter-of-factly.

Would Bukowski like the fact that people are stealing his books?

“Not at all,” says Martin. “He would think that was really misreading him, not understanding where he was coming from. I remember once, somebody wrote him a letter and said they had stolen his books out of a bookstore and the public library. He was outraged that someone would do that.”

So if you’re a book shoplifter, you might think twice before stealing a Bukowski book. You’re certainly not doing his literary estate any favors, and the local independent stores know exactly what you’re up to. Would-be thieves should heed the words of Bukowski himself. He died in 1994 at the age of 73, and on his tombstone, the epitaph reads simply, “Don’t try.”

In the spirit of this festive season, here’s a taste of prose from the most-stolen author in San Francisco. The holiday-themed excerpt that follows comes from the Bukowski anthology Run With the Hunted, and takes place on Christmas Day. The narrator (a writer named Henry Chinaski) has spent the previous night in a drunken argument with his girlfriend. She has now left. Their turkey dinner sits uneaten in the refrigerator. Two girls, soaring out of their minds on speed, pound on the door, demanding alcohol and food. Chinaski lets them in and offers them his turkey:

Tammie came out and sat down. She had just about finished the leg. Then she took the leg bone, bit and broke it in half, and started chewing the bone. I was astonished. She was eating the leg bone, spitting splinters out on the rug.

“Hey, you're eating the bone!”

“Yeah, it's good!”

Tammie ran back into the kitchen for some more.

Soon they both came out, each of them with a bottle of beer.

“Thanks, Hank.”

“Yeah, thanks, man.”

They sat there sucking at the beers.

“Well,” said Tammie, “we gotta get going.”

“Yeah, we’re going out to rape some junior high school boys!”

“Yeah!”

They both jumped up and they were gone out the door. I walked into the kitchen and looked into the refrig. That turkey looked like it had been mauled by a tiger—the carcass had simply been ripped apart. It looked obscene.