Patrick Whitehurst's Blog, page 37

‘Post Office’ a great job

Henry Chinaski is the kind of guy you can hang out with pretty often. Reading his story is kind of like coming home to rest for a while, with slippers and some beer, or maybe truckloads of beer. Charles Bukowski’s Post Office may not feel that way for everyone, but for a lot of people it’s a modern cozy. Like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poroit, Jane Marple or Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Bukowski’s writing is one of those safe bets when it comes to knowing how it will make you feel at the end of the book.

Just nowhere near as cozy.

Post Office clocks in on Chinaski, a down and outer, but one who can at least keep a job and a roof over his head, even if just barely. He’s not too mean, not too nice, and never too happy – just an average human like so many of us. His working life, particularly when it comes to his on again, off again employment with the U.S. Postal Service, is sad to the point of subdued hilarity. Chinaski himself is the kind of guy a person would enjoy working with, whether he’s getting locked in a stairwell, trying to burn the place down with cigar ash, or hoping to put the moves to the on-site nurse, there’s always something to smile about. It can also be taken as a dead-on observation of the working world, where everything has to be cleared by the boss and every action comes with documentation attached.

Bukowski’s meaty narrative carries a flavor all its own. Like S.E. Hinton’s edgy angst-ridden tones, Bukowski spews a sense of worthlessness in his writing; he lugs those tones to their truthful conclusion. He makes a nobody into a nobody we all stare at, laugh at, or pity, but not someone we think will ever change. Would anyone want Chinaski to do that?

Besides a smoker and a man of questionable ambitions, Bukowski is hailed as one of literary’s greatest poets and writers. His work can be summed up in just a handful of words. A man that people call Buk decided to write books. And he did.