![]() ![]() He starts as a temp and immediately bumps heads with the “ soup” Jonstone AKA The Stone. “But I couldn’t help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop their letters and get laid. This encounter impresses Chinaski who concludes: Soft! They only gave you a block or two and if you managed to finish, the regular carrier would give you another block to carry, or maybe you’d go back in and the soup would give you another, but you just took your time and shoved those Xmas cards in the slots.”Ĭhinaski meets an overly friendly, buxom female customer who wants more than just a Xmas card delivered. ![]() “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. Most of the novel gravitates around Chinaski’s job at the post office, and when he’s not at the post office, Chinaski is at the track or bedding some new woman. The list of Chinaski’s bad qualities is endless, but then again he does love his dog and shows kindness to an alcoholic ex lover. He’s antisocial, crude, profane and misogynistic. The anti-hero of Bukowski’s novel is Chinaski, and I absolutely loved this character. Memoirs of a Good-For-Nothing is the story of an eternally optimistic loafer while the protagonist of Post Office takes an acidic, sardonic view of life, but when the books conclude, both men are largely unchanged. On the surface, the two books are complete opposites, but then again after consideration, are they fundamentally so different? Both books chart the progress (or lack thereof) of their subjects. Well probably not as Chinaski does manage to stick it out at the post office for 12 miserable years, but in some ways Chinaski might qualify as a good-for-nothing as he doesn’t ‘amount’ to anything in the sense of ‘getting ahead’ in the world. When I finished Post Office, I wondered if we could also say that its anti-hero, Henry Chinaski, qualifies for the title of good-for-nothing. I recently finished Post Office from Charles Bukowski, and I can’t emphasize how much I enjoyed this nasty little novel, so special thanks to Max at Pechorin’s Journal for steering me towards my first Bukowski.Ī few weeks ago, I read Memoirs-of-a-Good-for-Nothing–the story of a 19th century happy-go-lucky slacker who’s basically booted out into the world by his frustrated father. ![]()
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