"I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight/ On a bed of California stars."

For those of us suffering through frigid climates, I came up with the warm-weather excerpt. I found this passage from Charles Bukowski’s novel, Hollywood, in an anthology called Los Angeles Stories: Great Writers on the City. It concerns the efforts of his doppelgänger (Chinaski) to buy a house after years of drifting, drinking, brawling and writing.

“Finally after a few weeks of house hunting, we found the one. After the down payment the monthly payments came to $789.81. There was a huge hedge in front on the street and the yard was also in front so the house sat way back on the lot. It looked like a good place to hide. There was even a stairway, an upstairs with a bedroom, bathroom and what was to become typing room. And there was an old desk left in there, a huge ugly old thing. Now, after decades, I was a writer with a desk. Yes, I felt the fear, the fear of becoming like them. Worse, I had an assignment to write a screenplay. Was I doomed and damned, was I about to be sucked dry? I didn’t feel it would be that way. But does anybody, ever?”

ALSO:

• A great Bukowski documentary.