“It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.”

Filthy, sleazy, surreal and hilarious: Bukowski's final completed novel, Pulp is a pulp-fiction parody novel which centers on themes of death and betrayal. The story follows the perspective of Nicky Belane, a hard-boiled, old-timer detective in L.A. trying to solve several strange, surreal interconnected cases by waiting them out.

“I'm not dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay, who isn't?”

Much of the writing is Bukowski musing about mortality and there are several metaphors signifying death. Bukowski dedicates the story to "bad writing", as Bukowski did not plan his mystery novel well and frequently wrote Nicky Belane into holes from which he could not escape. Bukowski wrote some of his most violent, cynical, sarcastic, and shocking work during the final months of his life. Many critics have agreed this novel exemplifies Bukowski showing an acceptance of his own pending mortality.



The story also makes multiple references to men of literature across the ages.

-> The name of character Nicky Belane rhymes suggestively with the name of author Mickey Spillane.

-> The Red Sparrow is a spoof of the Black Sparrow Press, owned by John Martin, who is parodied as John Barton in the novel.

-> The story mentions William Faulkners' As I Lay Dying multiple times. There is also a character signifying French author Céline.