Billy Childish

Thee Mighty Caesars were a primitive garage punk group, formed by Billy Childish in 1985 after the demise of The Milkshakes. They influenced many... American bands, especially The Mummies, and Sub Pop groups. They were arguably the group that brought about the resurgence of garage rock.
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John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent. He is perhaps best known for his work, Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiograpical novel about life in and around Los Angeles, California, which was the third in a series of four novels, published between 1938... and 1985, that are now collectively called, "The Bandini Quartet". That book was made into a movie by the same name in 2006. He also wrote several other books, stories, and screenplays, including the 1957 film, Full of Life, based on his 1952 novel by that name. Other noted screenplays Fante co-wrote include the 1962 films Walk on the Wild Side and The Reluctant Saint, and 1968's made-for-television movie, Something for a Lonely Man, as well as several others. Fante was born in Denver, Colorado in 1909 to his father, Nicola Fante and his mother, Mary Capolungo. He attended various Boulder, Colorado Catholic schools before briefly enrolling at the University of Colorado. He dropped out of college in 1929 and moved to Southern California to focus on his writing.
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Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships... with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife". Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski’s appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero." Charles Bukowski was born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, to Heinrich Bukowski and Katharina . Charles' mother was a native German and his father was an American serviceman of German descent. Charles' paternal grandfather Leonard had emigrated to America from Germany in the 1880s.
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Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.... His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and – in addition to publishing his poetry – was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans . Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.
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Vincent Willem van Gogh ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890 was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental... illness, he died at the age of 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted . His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still. Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes of flowers, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
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