Factotum
Charles Bukowski
Factotum
The prequel in Chinaski's life: the wandering years of bad jobs before the post office fixed him in place.
Read our takePost Office
Charles Bukowski
Post Office
Charles Bukowski quit the post office in January 1970 and handed his publisher this novel within weeks. It is the job, turned into literature.
- 1971
About Charles Bukowski
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freePost Office is Charles Bukowski's first novel, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1971, when he was fifty. Its narrator, Henry Chinaski — Bukowski's fictional alter ego — carries mail and then sorts it for the United States Post Office in Los Angeles, and the novel runs on the machinery of the job: supervisors, disciplinary write-ups, time clocks, impossible routes, and the flat refusal of the work to mean anything. Bukowski wrote it in the weeks after John Martin's hundred-dollar-a-month guarantee let him resign from the real post office, and it reads like a man emptying eleven years of accumulated evidence onto the page.
The story, in more detail
Henry Chinaski, a fictional stand-in for Bukowski himself, drifts into work as a substitute mail carrier because it looks easy and turns out not to be: bad routes, dogs, rain, and supervisors who log every minute. He quits, gambles at the racetrack, and comes back years later as a night-shift sorting clerk, where the novel settles into the grind the title promises.
Around the job, the life: drinking, the racetrack, the women Chinaski lives with and loses — among them a version of Jane Cooney Baker, the most important relationship of Bukowski's early life, whose death lands in the book with the flat devastation the style otherwise holds back. The novel ends where Bukowski's own postal years ended, with the resignation that made the book possible.
Why we recommend it
The front door to Bukowski
First novel, defining subject, and the fastest read of the six — most readers should start here.
Work without the mythology
Nothing in American fiction takes clock-punching drudgery more literally: the novel's engine is the job itself, not an escape from it.
What this book explores
Timeline
1952
Charles Bukowski begins working for the United States Post Office in Los Angeles as a substitute mail carrier.
1958
Returns to the post office as a sorting clerk at the Terminal Annex, the job the novel's second half grinds through.
1970
Resigns in January after John Martin's $100-a-month offer, and writes the novel in the weeks that follow.
1971
Black Sparrow Press publishes Post Office.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Black Sparrow Press
- 1971
- Paperback
- Ecco
- 2002
- 9780061844041
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Post Office: frequently asked questions
What is Post Office about?
Charles Bukowski's first novel follows Henry Chinaski, his fictional alter ego, through more than a decade as a mail carrier and then a sorting clerk for the United States Post Office in Los Angeles — the supervisors, the time clocks, the drinking and the racetrack around the job, and the resignation that ends it.
Is Post Office based on Bukowski's real life?
Closely, but it is fiction. Bukowski worked for the Los Angeles post office for over a decade, and the novel draws directly on those years, but Chinaski is an exaggerated, rearranged version of his author, and the book should not be read as literal autobiography.
How fast did Bukowski write Post Office?
In roughly a month. He resigned from the post office in January 1970, after the publisher John Martin guaranteed him $100 a month to write full time, and Martin received the manuscript within weeks.
Is Post Office a good first Bukowski book?
Yes — it is the usual recommendation. It is short, fast, funny, and introduces Henry Chinaski, the narrator who carries most of the novels.
When was Post Office published?
Black Sparrow Press published it in 1971, when Bukowski was fifty. Ecco has kept it in print since the Black Sparrow list was sold in 2002.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Post Office, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Post Office
NovelCharles Bukowski, 1971Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Charles Bukowski (Poetry Foundation)
WebsiteUsed forBiographical and bibliographic backbone: the career arc, the Black Sparrow relationship, and the book's place in it.
3Charles Bukowski timeline (bukowski.net)
WebsiteUsed forPublication dates, publishers, and chronology checked against the bukowski.net timeline.
4Charles Bukowski: books and chapbooks (Verdant Press checklist)
WebsiteUsed forBibliographic details cross-checked against the Verdant Press checklist.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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