 | The Losers Club by Richard Perez
Buy new: £4.19 / Used from: £5.48 Charles Bukowski appears as a shadowy mentor to a failed poet and loser in the restored version of this novel. Strangely, this is a very funny, soulful, even romantic book -- full of guts.
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 | Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 by Jack Kerouac
Buy used from: £6.52 Kerouac's early, early writing. Very revealing.
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 | The Selected Letters: 1957-1969 by Jack Kerouac
Buy new: £8.54 / Used from: £3.10 I love the letters to Ginsberg in which he discusses different methods of writing, even various narcotics to help him write.
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 | The Crack-up Reissue by F S Fitzgerald
Buy new: £4.52 / Used from: £5.98 Fitzgerald records his breakdown. Considered a washout, a has-been, he died at age 44, his novels all out of print. (Since then, of course, his books have reaped millions.)
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 | Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure by Paul Auster
Buy new: £5.82 / Used from: £3.45 Paul Auster talks about his days of struggle as a writer. He even mentions being a ghost writer for Jerzy Kosinski.
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 | A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
Buy used from: £25.99 An amazing book before memoirs were popular. Exley's struggles to be a writer despite being labeled a failure. He brings into question the so-called American Dream.
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 | The Books in My Life by H Miller
Buy new: £7.29 / Used from: £6.10 This book will inflame your passion for books! The first Henry Miller book I ever read. I love this one!
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 | Henry Miller on Writing (New Directions Paperbook) by H Miller
Buy new: £3.93 / Used from: £5.66 Henry Miller has much to say about the craft. Always exhilarating.
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 | Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Henry Miller
Buy new: £3.05 / Used from: £6.32 The first and most electric of Miller's books. You'll want to read this book many times over. The vulnerability of the writer's life. Slave to poverty.
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 | Quiet Days in Clichy by Henry Miller
Buy used from: £3.00 A fun, Boho romp in Paris -- one of Miller's most playful books.
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 | Black Spring by Henry Millerm
Buy used from: £2.70 Powerful shorter pieces include: The Angel is my Watermark! -- about the creative process. Wonderful!
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 | Henry and June: (From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin) (Penguin Modern Classics) by Anais Nin
Buy new: £3.13 / Used from: £3.95 Few people know that Anais Nin actually put up the money to print Miller's Tropic of Cancer
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 | A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £4.79 / Used from: £2.50 Hemingway's early days in Paris as he struggles to be a writer. Evokes powerful longing.
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 | Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Buy used from: £1.80 This book speaks of loneliness and hardship -- sadly, this is what being a writer is really about. The antidote? Laughter. Lose your sense of humor, and you're in trouble.
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 | Joe Gould's Secret (Vintage Classics) by Joseph Mitchell
Buy used from: £2.42 This is a great non-fiction book by Joseph Mitchell about Joe Gould, resident bum in Greenwich Village and would-be author of a mythic novel.
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 | Ask The Dust by John Fante
Buy new: £2.50 / Used from: £3.99 Essential for any lover of underground novels. Bandini struggles to make it as a writer in LA.
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 | Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski
Buy new: £3.68 / Used from: £3.54 A realistic portrait of Bukowski as wage slave for the US Post Office. 12 Years of Buk's life wasted. This may be his best book. It asks: do YOU what to spend the rest of your life in a cage?
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 | Factotum by Charles Bukowski
Buy new: £3.68 / Used from: £2.49 I dig this anti-work ethic book. Let's face it: most menial jobs = legal slavery. What's the US minimum wage, again? After taxes? $3.00?
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 | Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski
Buy new: £3.75 / Used from: £3.79 Bukowski survives his childhood determined to always tell the hardcore truth.
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 | Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Buy used from: £2.90 Early Bukowski -- and essential for any lover of the ultimate down and out author/poet. I admire Bukowski for being a great survivor. And he never lost his sense of humor, see?
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 | The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (Fear and Loathing Letters) by Hunter S. Thompson
Buy used from: £11.23 Hunter S Thompson's early letters spanning high school graduation in 1955 through the triumph of his first book, Hell's Angels, in 1966. Very cool.
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 | In the Drink by Kate Christensen
Buy used from: £0.21 A funny novel about a frustrated writer and loser (female, this time) forced to ghostwrite for a hideous uptown socialite/witch. She drinks heavily, too. Pretty funny. My kinda gal.
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 | Ignatius Rising: The Life of John Kennedy Toole by Rene Pol Nevils
Buy new: £21.94 / Used from: £12.66 By now we all know the sad story of John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces -- who commited suicide in despair over not being published. Publishers = spineless bastards!
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 | Adios, Scheherazade by Donald E. Westlake
Out of print book by Donald E. Westlake about a writer forced to writed porn novels to earn a living. Funny book. What people will do to maintain the illusion of being a writer.
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 | Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print by Lawrence Block
Buy used from: £1.99 Actually, the only useful book on novel writing -- written by Lawrence Block. Mentions he also wrote dirty books in the beginning of his career. Rock on.
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