With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his city in "Hot Water Music." He offers us small vignettes of decadence and lust, bite-sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque. The stories in "Hot Water Music" race through the worst corners of the city – a motel room that smells of vomit, a rundown apartment where a constantly fighting couple lives, a bar served by a skeleton – revealing the darkest sides of human existence. Bukowski speaks simply and profoundly about the social misery of the working class without passing judgment. In the way he writes about sex, relationships, writing, and drunkenness, Bukowski sets the bar for irreverent art – his work inhabits the lowest part of the mind and the most extreme absurdity of everyday life.