Title Post-Office
Author Charles Bukowski
Year Published 1971
Kind of Book Novel
How strongly I recommend it 5/10
My Impressions Written from the first person perspective of an alcoholic who has a career he hates at the post office. It has a very nihilistic tone. The protagonist is not particularly likable and is amoral. It also has a post-modernist feel in that it doesn't really have a story arc. It just feels like a guy recounting random stories from his life and then the book ends. It does do a good job of representing the drudgery of menial jobs and the lives many working class people in America live. It bummed me out, but that might have been the point.
Date Read May 2022
Notable Quotes
“Security? You could get security in jail. Three squares and no rent to pay, no utilities, no income tax, no child support, no license plate fees, no traffic tickets, no drunk driving taps, no loses at the racetrack, free medical attention, comradeship with those with similar interests, church, round eye, free burial.”
“All the supervisors had this look on their faces. They looked at ya as if you were a hunk of human shit. Yet they had come in through the same door. They had once been clerks or carriers…”
“There’s a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored. They don’t know what to do, so they play the office romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they manage to work off a screw or two on the side, but even then it’s just an offhand pass-time like bowling, or TV, or a New Years Eve party.”
“Look Faye' I said. 'I know you want to save the world, but can’t you start with the kitchen.'”
Big Ideas
Being in prison is a way to get free rent, utilities, no income tax, no child support, free medical attention, comradeship with others
Supervisors look at the people working below them with disgust (even though they had those jobs too at one point)
People who work in offices play a game called 'Romance', where the flirt and develop innocent crushes on one another (sometimes they turn into something real like sex) but usually it is done to pass the time because they are bored
People who want to save the worlds often times can't even manage their own lives