"The Killers" is a short-story by
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...
collected in his 1973 collection ''
South of No North'', originally published by
John Martin's
Black Sparrow Press
Black Sparrow Press is a New England based independent book publisher, known for literary fiction and poetry.
History
Black Sparrow was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1966 by John Martin in order to publish the works of Charles Bukowski ...
. The story elucidates Bukowski's publicly acknowledged artistic debt to
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
, the writer who had the most influence on American writers of Bukowksi's generation. Like Hemingway's "
The Killers
The Killers are an American rock band formed in Las Vegas in 2001 by Brandon Flowers (lead vocals, keyboards, bass) and Dave Keuning (lead guitar, backing vocals). After going through a number of short-term bass players and drummers in t ...
", Bukowski's story of the same name has as its thematic trope murder in a nihilistic universe. Unlike Hemingway, the killers actually accomplish their act in the time-frame of the story.
Bukowski's authorial point of view in his version of "The Killers" also is influenced by Hemingway, as he sees it as a logical outgrowth of the attitude expressed by Hemingway's fictional alter-ego
Nick Adams at the end of the 1927 "Killers":
Bukowski's fiction is full of attempts to escape the Los Angeles of his childhood and teen-years, all of which are doomed to failure as his fictional alter-ego,
Henry Chinaski
Henry Charles "Hank" Chinaski is the literary alter ego of the American writer Charles Bukowski, appearing in five of Bukowski's novels, a number of his short stories and poems, and the films ''Barfly (film), Barfly'' and Factotum (film), ''Factot ...
, finds the same appalling corruption everywhere he travels. In Bukowski's "The Killers", there is no escape for the murderers who are the protagonists of the story, mirroring the doomed boxer Ole Andreson in Hemingway's original.
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Works by Charles Bukowski
1973 short stories