He quits again and then pursues his career as a writer. Chinaski, like Bukowski, works for years as a mail carrier, quits, survives by gambling on horses, and returns to the post service as a mail sorter. The novel tells the story of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter ego, and his time spent as an employee of the U.S. Bukowski wrote Post Office, his first novel, in three weeks after quitting his job as a postal clerk. Post Officeīukowski worked a succession of odd jobs, had long periods of unemployment, and was a chronic gambler, but he did hold a steady post-office job for many years before devoting his life full time to writing. Furthermore, his writing contains biting criticism of his contemporaries, including Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Though he is often associated with the writers of the Beat generation, Bukowski felt he was following in the footsteps of the writers and musicians he greatly admired, including Pound, Faulkner, Hemingway, Jeffers, Fante, Fyodor Dostoevski, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Gustav Mahler. However, a close examination of his work reveals a writer who is obsessed with order, ritual, and kindness. Considering that Bukowski’s characters are often drunks (his alter ego and antihero Henry Chinaski), it could be difficult to believe that Bukowski was deeply concerned with bad manners. Salinger and Ernest Hemingway-also was interested in exposing phoniness. The themes that Bukowski explored throughout his career remained consistent in his own estimation, the artist’s goal is to explore the same themes eternally.īukowski-perhaps even more than writers J. As much as he wrote about booze, horse racing, failure, hesitation, and loss, he wrote twice as much about love, genuineness, literature, and music. As noted in many documentaries, biographies, and accounts of Bukowski’s life, however, he also had a gentle side. Most of Charles Bukowski’s writing examines his life as a drunk, drifter, gambler, loner, and unemployed and unemployable creature of habit.

Post office bukowski