Keith Office

Read from Saturday, January 1st to Monday, January 3rd.

Post Office, by Charles Bukowski. Bukowski was always one of those semi-famous underground authors that I wanted to check out. So one day I bought three of his books on Amazon. This is the first that I've read.

Apparently it is the first of a series of books about a character called Henry Chinaski, who is Bukowski's literary alter ego. Chinaski is an alcoholic, a womanizer, and a gambler at the race tracks. In this book, he painfully suffers through many years of working at the Post Office in LA in the 1950s and 60s. He is a letter carrier first, and then a clerk that sorts the mail. The bosses are always all over him, and Chinaski has to constantly file his job down into smaller and smaller time increments. He always shows up hungover, and frequently takes days off to go to the race track, where he has some mild success. He suffers through all the write-ups and reprimands and crazy co-workers and bosses.

He also lives with a string of 'shack-jobs,' women that he supports. But they eventually all he leave him one way or another, and he goes off and finds another. Chinaski is just looking for the cheap, easy thrills of life. He is not greedy, but he has his three vices of gambling, booze, and women. Eventually the post office and the women wear him down so much that he finally resigns. He goes on a bender and almost kills himself. But he persists, and wakes up one morning and writes a novel. That is where the story ends, presumably to be picked up in the next installment.

It is a quick book with short chapters. Filled with black humor, we the readers, along with Chinaski himself, are able to laugh at his life and job. I am interested to see where he goes from here. Three and a half out of five stars.