Post Office

Charles Bukowski’s Post Office reflects the intimate connection between the author’s lived experiences and his literary voice. Born in 1920 in Germany to a German mother and American father, Bukowski was raised in Los Angeles and spent much of his early life on the margins of society, experiencing poverty, alcoholism, and alienation.

His brief stints at various low-paying jobs, the main subject of his 1975 novel, Factotum, culminated in more than a decade of employment with the US Postal Service, where he worked first as a substitute carrier and later as a clerk. These years of labor directly inform the content of Post Office, making the novel one of the clearest examples of autofiction (autobiographical fiction) in modern American literature. Through his alter ego, Hank Chinaski, Bukowski transforms the routine drudgery of his daily life into biting satire and personal testimony, showing how bureaucratic systems wear down workers’ bodies and spirits.

Bukowski’s cult following propelled him out of the poverty and instability he struggled with for most of his early life. He authored more than 40 novels and poetry collections, and one screenplay, for the film Barfly. Bukowski’s most famous poems include the late works