Postoffice – Charles Bukowski

I knew a girl who read Bukowski

I knew a girl who read Bukowski. I knew a girl who read. I knew a girl. I knew.  I. I did not know the girl who read Bukowski. A girl who smoked like a fish and drank like a chimney.

All the words that litter papers and novelists that litter coffee shops are self conscious. Sentences fancify truth, life is analyzed. There are not many drinking, whoring, federal bureaucracy office worn whiteys writing their stories. They are busy serving the writers. Hungover and harassed by rules. Rules that are typed out in circulars and circulated by soups who were at one point themselves piss drunk and trying to get through life.

Enter Chinaski.

Chinaski gives us the finger as he wades through the swamps and filth of life as readers watch him from the sterile confines of their sofas and reading chairs. Through the pages he rips and mocks at our voyeurism as he runs through women and money and years of mind numbing service to the United States Postal Service. He makes it easy to laugh with him. Defiantly hazy and straightforwardly funny mapping the back alleys of the average man’s life.

The Mailman Cometh

There is an arrogance among people. A swagger that is always fearful of failure but defiant that they have made it to where they are in life. It is a fear that pervades most of us. The bobbing, blinging rappers and hustlers have it. They spit rhymes but fear poverty. Salarymen are the worst. To break away from this, live brazenly and have the ability to write about it and relate to people has all the beauty of an unextinguished flickering match flame in a downpour. A beauty that is not very striking, but nonetheless fascinating. And to think it is just one mailman’s sardonic take on life.

A foulmouthed reminder of how even a mail man’s life is infinitely fascinating if he decides to write about it. Even if it all started as a mistake.

Women

There is a common criticism about Chinaski’s women. Like automobiles, he buys them, rides them and parks them. Sometimes they roll off, sometimes they are towed away. Big deal. Maybe he got them through sheer mailman mojo. Fuck feminism. Global peace? Clean your kitchen first lady. Got millions? Doesn’t matter, your birds twitter too much. That is how much they (or relationships in general) mean to Chinaski. The same Chinaski who panics when water coolers are removed from his workplace. Who watches women walk out of his life and offers them lifts to their apartments. I believe him. I want to believe him.

The world is full of hypocrites. Even if Chinaski was one, he was one of a kind.