I wrote a couple of emails to GenXCore after I readCalifornia Roadkill. Something in it felt familiar, and I guessed that he had studied, as I once did, at California State University, Long Beach. I went to Cal State, Long Beach in the 1990s soon after Charles Bukowski, who always loomed large there because he lived nearby and would visit, had passed away. His influence on the students and faculty was large and a lot of people were writing what you might call bad Bukowski, work that was a pale imitation, where the writer pretended at the lifestyle and attitudes Bukowski had. Others took the lessons of his work, that it should be true to who you are, and were influenced by him. They didn’t write bad Bukowski but good and honest work of their own.

When I started to readCalifornia Roadkill, I was worried that…