Post Office by Charles Bukowski

 "I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard."

Post Office is Bukowski's first novel. Up until it was published he was focused on writing poetry. I finished this book about four weeks ago and never got around to writing a review. I just starting reading Bukowski this year, and he's quite the guy. Post Office follows Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chianski, while he's an employee of the US post office. There isn't much in terms of plot. Instead, we follow Henry through his day-to-day; waking up with hangovers, dragging himself to work, seducing women, boozing, and repeating it all the next day. (Bukowski himself worked at the US post office for 11 years before he quit at the age of 50 to pursue writing full-time.)

Bukowski is very direct in terms of language and subject matter - he discusses sex, women, and booze in a way that would easily offend a lot of people. I admit there were certain passages that grossed me out - like when he discussed his bowel movements with adjectives like "good" and "hot". But I also I found some of these bits to be humorous and smart - exposing human nature in an honest and amusing way.

"The midget was married to a very beautiful girl. When she was in her teens she got a coke bottle trapped in her p*ssy and had to go to a doctor to get it out, and, like in all small towns, the word got out about the coke bottle, the poor girl was shunned, and the midget was the only taker. He'd ended up with the best piece of ass in town."

Post Office is about a drifter, an alcoholic who doesn't aspire to be anything more than he already is. It's dry, it's crude and it's rough; it's filled with profanities, violence, and sex. Bukowski supposedly wrote the novel in just three weeks after Black Sparrow Press offered to pay him to quit the post office to write full-time. I have to say I enjoyed Ham on Rye more than this one because it was more plot focused and less of a character study, but if you like Bukowski, Post Office is still worth the read.

Publisher: Ecco, 1971

Thoughts on Bukowski's Barfly

My boyfriend got this movie for Christmas - one of the many gifts his mother gave him. At the time, the only thing I knew about this film was that it's pretty rare to find on DVD, making it a somewhat coveted, look-how-cool-I-am-to-own-this, movie*. After I bought Ham on Rye a month or two ago, Ryan was quick to tell me the Barfly was also a semi-autobiography of Bukowski's life for which he actually wrote the screenplay. After finishing Ham on Rye I was so excited Ryan had Barfly and we had the chance to watch it earlier this week. 

The first thing I should mention is that there isn't a lot of overlap between Ham on Rye and Barfly. The first focuses on Bukowski's early years, his adolescence into his early manhood, while Barfly begins with Bukowski's adulthood. Those differences aside, both the book and the movie exude a gritty, crude look at the life of a man who doesn't really give a shit about anything except where he can find his next drink. As with the book, the movie follows Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chianski. Henry, played by Mickey Rourke, is as smarmy and sordid as he came across in Ham on Rye, if not more so.

Most notably for me, the film began and ended with the same scene, signaling Henry's lack of growth or progression throughout the entirety of the movie. It's almost as though he has taken hold of the person he believes himself to be and doesn't let go of it, for better or worse. The film as a whole is quite dark and mostly miserable, it's also very entertaining and at times, even cheerful, but don't ask me to put my finger on any scene that leads me to this conclusion. Oh, and this may go without saying, but Faye Dunaway's performance is seriously AH-mazing. Upon finishing the movie I couldn't help but think that if Bukowski were alive today, he would really hate all of us in the "me" generation with our over-the-top consumerism and self-absorption. 

This is a world where everybody's gotta do something. Y'know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody's gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that.  Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don't wanna do. All the things that I don't wanna be. Places I don't wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don't understand that.

After the film we watched the special features, which include four clips from interviews with Bukowski. His outlook on life is incredibly interesting, but also incredibly pessimistic. I should also note that Bukowski wrote a book that chronicles his experience writing the screenplay for Barfly, entitled Hollywood. In addition, Bukowski himself does make a cameo in the movie, playing what else, but a patron at the bar. If you've read and enjoyed even one of Bukowski's novels, I have to tell you I don't think you'll be disappointed with this movie. 

*I did find a copy of it on Amazon, so I'm not exactly sure what the difference between this rare edition vs. the mass market edition, if there even is one. Regardless, I still think it's cool if you own this movie.

Release date: September 30th, 1987

Written by: Charles Bukowski

Directed by: Barbet Schroeder

Presented by: Francis Ford Coppola

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

What a weary time those years were - when you had the desire and the need to live, but not the ability.

This book was on a staff recommendation shelf at Half Price Books awhile back and after reading the synopsis I decided to buy it. I went into it without any expectations, which I've come to learn is the best way to go into reading any novel, really. Ham on Rye is a semi-autobiographical novel of Bukowski's own life, which makes the book all the more fascinating. We follow Henry Chianski, Bukowski's alter-ego, grow from a child into a young man during the Great Depression. It's a coming-of-age novel, but it's quite different from most other novels I've read in that genre. Bukowski's prose is straighforward but powerful, the diction is crude but intriguing. I have to say Henry Chianski is a character I won't soon forget. The majority of his childhood is filled with uncertainty and loneliness and even though he is a prick most of the time, I still wanted him to succeed in life.

This book is not for the fainthearted, as it's soaked with profanities, dirtiness, and violence; masturbation, impromptu trysts in the backseat of abandoned cars, and drunken brawls. About halfway through my reading of Ham on Rye, I actually stopped and thought to myself, there is no way teenage boys think about sex and women's anatomy that much. The subject permeates a good portion of the novel. But it's about more than that; it's about the awkwardness that is adolescence and growing up in a time when there was little opportunity and making the most out of it.

We were the way we were, and we didn't want to be anything else. We call came from Depression families and most of us were ill-fed, yet we had grown up to be huge and strong. Most of us, I think, got little love from our families, and we didn't ask for love or kindness from anybody. We were a joke but people were careful not to laugh in front of us. It was as if we had grown up too soon and we were bored with being children.

In addition, I felt that Bukowski's outlook on life, or at least the outlook he related through Chianski, is somewhat Vonnegut-esque. As Vonnegut stated, "We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different," Bukowski writes, "The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking."It's all just a deconstruction of the wonderful beings we believe ourselves to be and a reminder that at the end of the day, we are all human, stinking, sweating, germy people just trying to make it through.

I ended up liking this book a lot, which was actually a bit of a surprise to me. I wasn't surprised in the way that I feel like I'm too good for the book and all this crudeness is just absurd (I actually rather intrigued by it). Instead, I was surprised in the sense that a novel that included such low morals and a lack of a plot could communicate such universal issues that felt so relevant to me. That is what surprised me. But I think we can all relate to coming-of-age stories, not matter how great or how little.

Though the novel isn't super short, it's actually a quick read. Highly recommended.

Publisher: Rebel, Inc, 1982