Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, (1983). First edition, 1st printing. #39 of 400 copies. 8vo. 221 pp. Original cream paper boards over navy corduroy cloth, spine label text in black in original, clear acetate dust-jacket. Acetate jacket shows wear with surface scratches to gloss, rubbing, fading. Book is tight, square and firm with a light forward lean. A few surface scratches and divots, panel edges with a few nicks. Slight toning to panel and page edges. Page edges a touch smudged. Interior clean and unmarked. Boldly signed by the author, with doodle of man (“jugman”) and beer bottle in black pen on the rear colophon page.

Dust Jacket: Good

Hardcover: Very Good

“The collection deals largely with drinking, women, gambling, and writing. It is an important collection that establishes Bukowski's minimalist style and his thematic oeuvre. The punk rock band Hot Water Music is named after the collection. With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his side of town in Hot Water Music . He gives us little vignettes of depravity and lasciviousness, bite sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque. The stories in Hot Water Music dash around the worst parts of town - a motel room stinking of sick, a decrepit apartment housing a perpetually arguing couple, a bar tended by a skeleton - and depict the darkest parts of human existence. Bukowski talks simply and profoundly about the underbelly of the working class without raising judgement. In the way he writes about sex, relationships, writing, and inebriation, Bukowski sets the bar for irreverent art - his work inhabits the basest part of the mind and the most extreme absurdity of the everyday.”