This book is not a chronological narrative. Rather, it is the autobiography of the late Jory Sherman and his twenty-year friendship with Charles Bukowski, a friendship steeped in a love of language, a lusty passion for life with all its humiliation and degradation. In particular, it chronicles those struggling years when they were both just beginning to publish poems in the literary journals, the so-called "little magazines," where poets fought each other and the world in thousands of bloodless, but terribly wounding, battles. "Jory Sherman delivers. In a tradition of literary memoir, he delivers a clear, informative, and entertaining portrait of his relationship with Charles Bukowski..." – Neeli Cherkovski "This memoir is, to use an overused word, compelling. It reads easy, almost like a long, vivid letter that opens doors, by invitation, into both Bukowski's and Sherman's personal lives..." – Tom Geddie