Tom Waits reads Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Life and work[edit] Family and early years[edit] Charles Bukowski was born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, to Heinrich (Henry) Bukowski and Katharina (née Fett). His paternal grandfather Leonard had emigrated to America from Germany in the 1880s. Charles Bukowski's parents met in Andernach in western Germany following World War I. The family settled in South Central Los Angeles in 1930, the city where Charles Bukowski's father and grandfather had previously worked and lived.[8][10] In the '30s the poet's father was often unemployed. In his early teens, Bukowski had an epiphany when he was introduced to alcohol by his loyal friend William "Baldy" Mullinax, depicted as "Eli LaCrosse" in Ham on Rye, son of an alcoholic surgeon. On July 22, 1944, with World War II ongoing, Bukowski was arrested by FBI agents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he lived at the time, on suspicion of draft evasion. Early writing[edit] In 1955 he was treated for a near-fatal bleeding ulcer.