Will I love Post Office?

Note-perfect 200-page tent flap pullback of the gloriously flawed Henry Chinaski, the poster manchild for living life on your own terms. But you already knew that. Gambling, drinking, aimlessness, and all the stuff we love to get neck deep in. And by “we,”  I mean me. And maybe the greatest opening line in the history of literature: “It began as a mistake.” Here’s why I am a fraud: I didn’t know about this book until four years ago.

Bukowski was already known, in a small way, as a poet and underground columnist when he wrote his first novel, the autobiographical Post Office. It was given to me by a friend when I lived in London and it just blew me away. The book – an account of Bukowski’s ten years as a postman in LA –  is a rollicking ride full of barroom brawls, boozy beddings, and battles with uncaring authority. Set in cheap, shitty rooms, populated by rejects and losers, I’d never read anything like it before. Bukowski seems to write about nothing in particular –… show more.