Bukowski Never Went Postal

They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? An automobile on monthly payments? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place. They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: And then I did. Courage comes from the belly — all else is desperation. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to.

We slept without touching. We had both been robbed. Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love. I was not a drug man, but in case I wanted to hide from myself for a few days, I knew I could get anything I wanted from him. I've had over 50 jobs, maybe a hundred. I've never stayed anywhere long.

What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office-romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. We have found 1 match! Charles Bukowski , also known as Henry Chinaski.

Do not disturb before 5pm. He used to be spotted in several bars, around the post office, at the racetrack or in his moldy appartment, but since he's dead now we recommend looking for him at the library. In fact, we highly recommend it.

Charles Bukowski - Excerpt from Post Office

Be sure to bring him with you on your next visit to the bar, it's where he truly shines. View all 27 comments. My first affair with Bukowski. I found this book while substitute teaching a group of tranquil 12th graders. I picked up the book, began reading, and couldn't believe that this book was allowed in a classroom.

Luckily the students had no interest whatsoever in the book, so I had it all to my evil self. The book is hilarious. I read it in an afternoon. I became that crazy person in a coffee shop cackling over her book. The sentences are short and sharp. The protagonist has no regard for anything My first affair with Bukowski. The protagonist has no regard for anything. He is a fucked up womanizer, but I still love it. Plus, Bukowski's use of capitalization is genius. I know he's fucked up, but I love him so. Another masterpiece of feminism in American Literature.

The protagonist is one alcoholic, misogynistic mess! Anyone interested in the classics. Allow me to introduce you to Never have I come across a character that is just so disgraceful ; a sad, lousy Allow me to introduce you to Never have I come across a character that is just so disgraceful ; a sad, lousy, pathetic bastard!

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The opening line of Post Office is: The novel's narrator is Henry "Hank" Chinaski, a middle-aged alcoholic, willing to buck any system, void of ambition, yet exhibiting superior intellect and reasoning. In his youth, Hank worked in slaughterhouses, crossed the country on a railroad track gang, worked in a dog biscuit factory, slept on park benches, and worked nickel-and-dime jobs in a dozen cities.

He tells his story after waking up from a terrible drinking spree. During one christmas season, after hearing from a drunk that the Post Office would hire "damned near anybody to deliver the mail", Hank applies and is successful at securing a delivery job as a temp. Oh…but hang on a minute…it's not just mail that Hank is interested in delivering! What I mean by big was that her ass was big and her tits were big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit crazy but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care. She talked and talked and talked. Then it came out. Her husband was an officer on an island far away and she got lonely, you know, and lived in this little house in back all by herself.

She wrote the address on a piece of paper. I was lonely for that big ass standing beside me. But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes. But while Hank is interested in the ladies, dogs are interested in Hank! It was one of those degree days and I was running along, sweating, sick, delirious, hungover. I stopped at a small apartment house with the box downstairs along the front pavement. I popped it open with my key.

There wasn't a sound. Then I felt something jamming its way into my crotch. It moved way up there. I looked around and there was a German Shepherd, full-grown, with his nose halfway up my ass. With one snap of his jaws he could rip off my balls. I decided that those people were not going to get their mail that day, and maybe never get any mail again.

Man, I mean he worked that nose in there.

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It wasn't just private houses where Hank delivered the mail. Businesses were also included on his run, including the local Roman Catholic Church. I went in through an open door. Do you know what I saw? A row of toilets. But it was dark. All the lights were out. How in hell can they expect a man to find a mailbox in the dark? Then I saw the light switch. I threw the thing and the lights in the church went on, inside and out. I walked into the next room and there were priests' robes spread out on the table.

There was a bottle of wine. For Christ's sake, I thought, who in hell but me would ever get caught in a scene like this? I picked up the bottle of wine, had a good drag, left the letters on the robes, and walked back to the showers and toilets. I turned off the lights and took a shit in the dark and smoked a cigarette. I thought about taking a shower but I could see the headlines: Post Office is broken down into six distinct parts that recounts Hank's life as a succession of boring interludes over a fourteen-year period of employment in the postal service.

The plot moves along on the intensity and energy of various crises involving Hank and his supervisors, coworkers, and lovers. He is a typical picaresque hero, the rogue who satirizes his authoritative supervisors. His tone is consistently cynical, he drinks excessively, and he appears to positively avoid success or happiness or comfort, preferring to subsist in penury and even misery.

He's a congenital loser trapped in a dead-end profession from which he can derive no personal satisfaction, yet possessed of enough self-awareness to recognize the absurdity of his situation. It is widely reported that Hank is, in fact, the author's Charles Bukowski alter-ego and that is why the novel is written straight from the hip in unambiguous, accessible prose. The novel sheds light on Bukowski's life during the period from and until he resigned from his job at the post office in , before returning to his position in , where he continued to work until One never knows just where Bukowski's life ends and Hank's life begins!

It is widely written that Bukowski too led a reckless life; his relationships with women and his world, which was full of gambling at horse races, booze, sex, homelessness, postal service, and crazy events, were full of black comedy at times and yet deeply tragic at others. This unfolds as Hank recounts his history of working at the post office. The closing lines of Post Office are as brilliant as the opening and one gets a sense here that this was Bukowski speaking through Hank again, during a life-affirming moment: I'm glad I did.

I went through the gamut of emotions, including laughing at the moments of levity. I recommend Post Office with caveats. If easily offended by language then think twice about reading it. Looking at the big picture, this is an insightful and thought-provoking story about a working man trying to survive the day to day. View all 28 comments. Charles Bukowski's first novel presenting roughly the last fifteen years before his 50th birthday. He will have spent 12 years living this hellish job at the post office, horse racing, alcohol and women.

Women he meets rather seriously, two or three long and many relationships, but still an unconditional love for the drink. And when he describes his work, one can understand why he sinks so easily into alcohol and needs women to clear his head. This autobiography is written in a familiar register Charles Bukowski's first novel presenting roughly the last fifteen years before his 50th birthday.

This autobiography is written in a familiar register perfectly corresponding to what it means. A very good novel without dead time. I don't know about you, but that does not make you want to be a postman View all 4 comments. What do you get when you mix two cases of beer, chronic gambling, and a vulgar, "Fuck this world and fuck you if you live in it" attitude? Probably not a very nice person. But after reading "Post Office", my first by Bukowski, you start to realize that there are too many fucking pussy ass nice people in the world.

I wish sometimes that I could live ten minutes of my life the way Henry Chininski wakes up every morning. Maybe then my balls might drop just an inch or two and I could get the fucking What do you get when you mix two cases of beer, chronic gambling, and a vulgar, "Fuck this world and fuck you if you live in it" attitude? Not that Chininski was any Henry fucking Ford.

Post Office Quotes

This mofo was lazy, self-destructive, and pretty much just amazing. Reading "Post Office" isn't just an entertaining romp into the mind of a tortured genius drunk shithead it is ; it's also an excellent resource for figuring out why modern writers have such stupid literary style it all started with you, Bukowski. So, next time you wake up and you feel like fucking pounding a case of Schlitz right after you beat the shit out of your cute ass toy poodle, read "Post Office" and get motivation to sit on your ass, complain about your job, shit on the opposite sex, and really, really, really fucking appreciate the finer delicacies of life.

Because life is amazing, you just gotta punch the shit out of it sometimes. I enjoyed this more than I expected and in some way, more than I think I should! Hank Chinaski describes a little more than a decade of his life. He is intelligent, but mostly lives the life of a loser: It is all somewhat detached; his daughter is "the girl", even though he knew "as long as I could see the girl I would be all right", but such detachment is nece I enjoyed this more than I expected and in some way, more than I think I should!

It is all somewhat detached; his daughter is "the girl", even though he knew "as long as I could see the girl I would be all right", but such detachment is necessary for him to survive his lifestyle, especially the times when he is hurt. Amorality Redeemed by Humour Despite his general lack of moral compass or consideration of such matters, and the dreadful way he treats some women, it is a compellingly written story, with a wonderful irreverent wit than won me over, rather as an indulgent adult overlooks the worst excesses of a naughty child.

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At times it appears like a rambling stream-of-consciousness, but I think that is a chimera and that it is actually a carefully crafted story. Bathos The opening line is, "It began as a mistake", section two opens, "Meanwhile, things went on" and the book closes with, "Maybe I'll write a novel I thought. When job hunting, "The first place smelled like work, so I took the second" and much of the humour comes from work, especially satirising the bureaucracy of the post office supervisors and colleagues who are variously incompetent, sadistic and playing the system.

It's not just bureaucracy, but full control, bordering on brainwashing: When trying to learn the routes, Chinaski comes up with a variant of traditional memory techniques, but instead of visualising ordinary people and objects along the route, his is more like a series of orgies. Like many administratively burdened institutions, "You had to fill out more papers to get out than to get in", but before he leaves, Chinaski has one victory: Poignant Despite the light touch, Chinaski isn't immune from hurt, grief and introspection: We had both been robbed" and "How the hell do I know who you are or I am or anybody is?

Nevertheless, dirt and depravity notwithstanding, the overall tone is humorous. Insane but Never Dull? Early on Chinaski realises "the streets were full of insane and dull people"; he is probably the former, but certainly never the latter. View all 7 comments. This could be a true story, he could honest to god have sat down one day, with a hangover from hell, and decided to write this book, for no other reason than to tell the world " I exist.

Lives like this are lived every day ". Something struck me, not in the book well, to be honest, the entire book struck me , but there was something on the back of it. One of the reviews read: It isn't relentlessly funny , no, it's relentles Bukowski puzzles me. It isn't relentlessly funny , no, it's relentlessly jokey. Funny is clean, it makes you feel good, like it'll all work out in the end.

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Jokey is when you're standing in the gutter knee deep in shit and you make a joke about not lighting a cigarette because it would set the world on fire. Or something like that. So I agree this book isn't funny, there are no thought through jokes, they were never meant to be written down on paper and told in a microphone for a well-dressed crowd, the world simply shoved situations in his face and he decided to laugh.

Jokey indeed, and well done, Bukowski has you laughing with him. Then there's the other part "and sad". At the end of the sentence, like it's an afterthought, the feeling you're left with when all the others have come and gone. It's so simple, no fancy word, no 'sorrowful', no 'endlessly depressing'. There's not a damn thing you can do about it, it's the way it is.