To quote from the YouTube download: "Charles Bukowski spent his life surrounded by idiots — at the post office, in bars, on the streets of Los Angeles. Instead of fighting them, he turned them into literature. This is a raw, unfiltered essay about surviving in a world full of noise without losing yourself.
From the smell of stale beer to the hum of the city at night, this piece captures Bukowski’s sharp wit, quiet revenge, and his simple philosophy: the world doesn’t have to change for you to survive in it. You just have to learn how to move through it without tripping too much."
I discovered Charles Bukowski too late in life to corrupt my respectable, middle-class-aspiring mind, but the moment I had picked up a second-hand copy of "Post Office, his first novel, and read the first sentence, "It began as a mistake", I was hooked. "It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this leather sack on my back and was hiking around at my leisure. What a job, I thought." What writing, I thought. It wasn't just the words that got to me. It was the awkwardness of the writing, its closeness to speech.
"Post Office" is the story of Henry (Hank) Chinaski, a lowlife loser with a hand-to-mouth existence and the fictional alter ego of Charles Bukowski, who joins the U.S. Postal Service as a sub-contractor, was made a regular after three years, but somehow was not happy, and so decided to quit. Little did he know that in two years he would be back for nearly twelve years. As he wrote, "I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power."
Bukowski's writing is inarticulate, but deliberately so. Each word clings tight to the next; there is no room for any more. It is a tightly choreographed clumsiness. And it is great. However, you may not be into reading as much as I am, so here's the full-length movie "Barfly", a semi-autobiography of Charles Bukowski during the time he spent drinking heavily in Los Angeles, presented by his alter ego Henry Chinaski.
To use the standalone, one-word imperative so commonly used now by all our waiting staff, "Enjoy!", to which I always reply, "Enjoy what?"
