Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness

Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness was a paperback collection of short stories by Charles Bukowski, first published by City Lights Publishers in 1972.[1] It was the first collection of Bukowski’s stories to be published, and it was republished in two volumes in 1983, as Tales of Ordinary Madness and The Most Beautiful Woman in Town.

Charles Bukowski, born 8/16/20, Andernach, Germany. Brought to America at the age of two. Eighteen or 20 books of prose and poetry. Bukowski, after publishing prose in Story and Portfolio stopped writing for ten years. He arrived in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, hemorrhaging as a climax of a ten-year drinking bout. Some say he didn’t die. After leaving the hospital he got a tyewriter and began writing again – this time, poetry. He later returned to prose and gained some fame with his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, which he wrote mainly for the paper, Open City. After 14 years in the Post Office he resigned at age 50, he says, to keep from going insane. He now claims to be unemployable and eats typewriter ribbons. Once married, once divorced, many times shacked, he has a seven-year-old daughter.

These dirty and immortal stories appeared mainly in Underground newspapers, with Open City and Nola Express leading in the publication of them. Others have appeared in Evergreen Review, Knight, Pix, Berkeley Barb, Adam, and Adam Reader.

With Bukowski, the votes are still coming in. There seems to be no middle ground – people seem either to love him or hate him. Tales of his own life and doings are as wild and weird as the very stories he writes. In a sense, Bukowski is a legend in his time…a madman, a recluse, a lover…tender, vicious…never the same…these are exceptional stories that come pounding out of his violent and depraved life…horrible and holy…you cannot read them and ever come away the same again.