Post Office
Bukowski is a smooth talker if you’re willing to listen. He just wants to tell you his uncensored tales of drinking and sex! He just wants to tell you about how he worked for the Man—in and out of postal service jobs for over a decade. He just wants to impress you with his ability to overcome hangovers. He’s just a guy who did whatever he felt like at the time to make ends meet until he hit a wall and succumbed to drunken oblivion. He woke up and noted, “It was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I’ll write a novel…And then I did” (Bukowski, 196). And then he did, so here we are.
Almost two years ago, I read and reviewed my first Bukowski novel, Ham on Rye. I introduced Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s thinly-veiled literary alter ego. In Post Office, Chinaski is older, albeit still deeply cynical. He works at the post office when it suits him, and places bets at the racetrack when it doesn’t. Chinaski does what he wants. He’s animalistic in his pursuits, and he’ll quit something immediately if he feels so inclined. But there is less fallout than in Ham on Rye. He confidently steers his life in a specific direction, even if it’s conventionally discouraged.
There’s something to be said for warming up to an author. I enjoyed The Brothers Karamazov better than Crime and Punishment, partially because I knew what to expect. I understood Dostoevsky’s style a bit more, and I appreciated it more as a result. I knew what bothered me about him, and I dodged those bullets; likewise, I knew what I enjoyed, and I embraced those aspects. This time around, Bukowski’s crudeness did not come as a surprise, and his piggishness towards women was less shocking. Bukowski is unapologetically boorish. He’s the ultimate bachelor, with no regard for others if he’s not feeling it. That’s the character, so you have to go into it with that expectation.
When a book’s opening line is “It began as a mistake”, I know that I’m in for a treat (Bukowski, 13). I enjoy reading about other people’s mistakes because it makes me feel less miserable about my own. This novel further cemented Bukowski as *one of the greats* in my own literary archive, but it also wasn’t “one of the funniest books ever written”, as touted on the back of the book. It was definitely funny, but chill out with that. I dig Bukowski’s raw vulnerability and his characteristic self-confidence; thus, I give Post Office 4 out of 5 flames.
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