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