Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life by Howard Sounes

This is an appropriately gutsy biography of Charles Bukowski, the American poet and novelist who almost singlehandedly inspired a generation of would-be writers to believe that you could spend your entire life getting drunk and still achieve a reputation as a cult author. Sounes gives his energetic account the same mule kick that characterised Bukowski's work – the famously ugly Bukowski, he writes, "had no compunction about trying to screw any woman who looked at him twice". Best of all, though, the bile and brawling is interleaved with Bukowski's poems and reflections from a fine array of sources, including Robert Crumb, Allen Ginsberg and Mickey Rourke, who played Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski, in Barfly .