Charles Bukowski - Matthias Schultheiss
Storie Di Ordinaria Follia

And so it was that, on a drizzly March Sunday, at a flea market smelling of fried fish and urine, under a mountain of books piled hastily on a makeshift stall, I stumbled upon this strange comic book by Coniglio Edizioni (2005).

It wasn't the famous book "Tales of Ordinary Madness" by the old poet-drunkard Charles Bukowski, but a comic book adaptation by the equally great Matthias Schultheiss (one of the greatest contemporary comic artists, in Italy known only among genre enthusiasts).

Uncle Buck had already collaborated in those same years with the legendary Robert Crumb, who illustrated some of his works (example), and it was evident that this idyllic relationship between literature and illustration was destined to continue (Buck himself loved drawing cartoons in his notebooks to gather ideas and give a visual sense to what he had in mind, see here).

In fact, in 1982 the artist Matthias reinterpreted CB's work and illustrated six stories: The 300-pound whore, My fat-ass mother, Henry Beckett, A Job in New Orleans, New York at 95 cents a day, and Two Losers. With a densely packed yet at the same time gritty linework (see here) that closely resembles the early Moebius or the Milo Manara of the 80s, Schultheiss makes us breathe the same dust of the suburbs where some stories are set, makes us hear the noise of traffic or the obsessive heat of certain desolate shores of the American outskirts (example).

Stories of losers and drunks then, of disillusioned and drifting people, of an America with no more dreams to invest in, told with elegant mastery by two great authors (both tied by birth to post-war Germany). A book that, technically, falters a bit due to imperfect printing (in certain pages the black sometimes tends towards dark gray, and the rough paper of the pages turns yellowish) but still enhances the charm of a "perfectly coherent" object with the decadent and nihilistic content of the stories told.

"Coherent" like this incredible coincidence of having found and bought it—practically new—for 5 damn euros at a flea market in the capital, rather than at a glossy bookstore in the refined historic center.

But then, does Luck really exist?