But there is one person, one voice that shows the trust in him and keeps telling him you can do it. The detective himself does not know who he is, why so many the people are trusting him with the job that he finds incapable of doing. Another theme is that of a confused identity. His comical use of catch phrases like “I’m gonna nail her ass” just adds to the desperation he has to prove his worth. Loneliness is one of the themes of this book which is highlighted when the detective becomes determined to prove that a client’s wife is cheating on him. While I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but make comparisons between the outside world where the detective was stuck in a mess and his inner chaotic world. Suddenly, his business is booming, but that doesn’t help the fact that his life is a mess. His life turns upside down when he starts getting ridiculous cases to solve and turns out to be pretty good at solving them. He is a drunkard, a lazy ass man, who picks more fights with random strangers than the number of cases he solves. The protagonist of this book Nick Belane is a detective but his behaviourism seemed like an essence of the protagonist of each one of Bukowski’s poems (Chinaski). A detective that is in the image of the writer

This was the first novel that I picked up and I must say it exceeded my expectations. I know his writing mainly through his poems which are imitated across the world because of its unique style. But if you are familiar with the nuances of the writings of this brilliant raw and edgy writer, then Pulp will feel like a nostalgia trip. If you have never read book Bukowski before, then Pulp is not the book that you should start with.

Pulp charles bukowski review