I guess the good times ain't wrong, just killing me

Hey! I read Bukowski's Factotum and Post Office over the last day and a half. Quick reads. Anyway, I was debating on not posting at all, since I still remember (sort of) my Post Office post. But I'm not as wussy and timid as I would in those first few tremulous months (is tremulous a real word? Am I using it correctly?) so I feel it will be even better than ever before. Also, I realized what an idiot I was before. Last time I spent two paragraphs wondering which came first. In Post Office, he talks about his parents' funeral. And sleeping on park benches and working at a dog biscuit factory. He's also says he's almost 50. In Factotum, he stays at his parents' home for a brief stint, he has a 2 am job at the dog biscuit factory and sleeps on benches and WWII ends halfway through. Which came first? Uhduhhhhhhhhhhhh.



So, I like Bukowski. Even though he's super gross sometimes, mainly when he talks about Chinaski wiping himself and doing a bad job of it. Or just in general. No thanks. Facototum is basically Henry Chinaski wandering around, drunken, gaining and losing jobs, gaining and losing women. Yep.



"'How much money we got?' They looked through their pockets. They had a nickel. 'Well, what are we going to do?' 'I don't know. Let's start walking.' I watched them walk off, out of the park, into the city" (23).



So, like I said, early on Chinaski takes a short stint back at his parents' home. Instead of going out and looking for a job (as he is an ex-college student) he listens to "symphony music" (25) and smokes his father's cigarettes and is voyeur to the sexy housewife across the way. Hmm, sounds like someone named Alex de Large. Just saying...



"'Well, you see, I've been painting. A painter, you know? I've run out of money. Can't sell the stuff.' ... 'Cheer up. Maybe you'll be famous after you're dead'" (42). Wow. How... reassuring. I'm relieved now. Looks like I can always dream...



"'Why do you want to work in a ladies' dress shop?' 'I've always liked ladies in ladies' dresses'" (56). Hehe. Can you imagine if someone tried that today? You'd probably get cops called on you.



"'Have you ever been in love?' 'Love is for real people.' 'You sound real.' 'I dislike real people.' 'You dislike them?' 'I hate them'" (60). Of, Chinaski is being cynical, as he is 97.999% of the time. But this conversation for some reason stands out to me, I can very easily picture it. Chinaski, scowling, giving Gertrude (who asks him if he's ever been in love) a dull, uninterested (but somewhat nasty) look from over his solder, hand on a half empty shot glass with a cigarette tucked in between his fingers, spilling ashes on the bar top.



"'Don't worry, baby,' I'd say, 'the next hard bump we hit will turn the lights on.' ... Jan would bounce up and down, trying to hold on to her bottle of port. I'd grip the wheel and look for a bit of light on the road ahead. Hitting those bumps would always turn the lights on. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but we'd always get the lights on" (96). So yeah. This is what I'm going to pretend is symbolism. The bump being something, well, bad happening. Chinaski losing yet another job, say, but after--something always arises. Though he goes through jobs like a wildfire, there's always something else. So, the light, would be--uh, jobs? Crud. I sound stupid. But the point is, I feel when Jan finally leaves--and I believe the car goes with her--he's done. It's over for him. *



"I kept telling myself all women in the world weren't whores, just mine" (140). Okay, so there's more humor than literary points or what have you. But Bukowski is a pretty humorous guy, if not laugh-out-loud hilarious at the very least tongue-in-cheek. Or chuckle-worthy. Chuckle chuckle.



"Then I gave him a look straight out of 'Casablanca'" (158). Oh hey, reference to an awesome movie. On an unrelated note, my dad was reenacting scenes from Casablanca today, replacing Sam with Rod Serling. As in, Humphrey: "Play it again, Sam (etc)." Rod: "Do you know who the hell I am?" It was pretty hilarious.





*Here comes the end, so spoiler alert!: Chinaski goes to a strip club and watches a really sexy dancer. He has less than a dollar in his pocket, no prospects, drunk, nothing. It ends with "I couldn't get it up" (205), you know, for this sexy dancer he's watching. This is me, again, pretending I can find symbolism: his not being able to, uh, 'get it up', would be his inability to fix his life, you know, get his life out of the gutter. Does that sound ridiculous? Maybe. But, that's how it seems to me, and at this point, he's nothing. He's a ragged hobo, practically. He's not even interested in the girls. He's done. I always feel like he just went into some alleyway and died, and that was the unwritten ending. I mean, it just felt like such an... such an end. You don't even need to describe more, because you know he's going to end up dead in an alleyway within weeks, or more likely, a few days. So... yeah. The fact that he didn't die and turned up in Post Office always weirdly disappoints me. Like, for the most part, I've made my peace with that fact, but it still kind of feels like a cop-out. Like sometimes when you want the main character to live, but you know it would be total BS if he actually did and you'd end up hating the whole book/movie/TV show/radio program. Yup.



There's evidently a movie based off this book. Intrigued. Hitting that up, most likely tomorrow, if Netflix stops hating me. Which is unlikely. It knows I am not Jenna. "I'm sorry, I can't let you do that, Angela." Gbrgrsgrfffghhhh. Crud.

And now comes Post Office! This is funnier than its predecessor, and also ten times stranger. The people Chinaski delivers mail to--they're crazy. The people he works with are mad. Anyway. As you can guess, Chinaski is, in this book, working in a post office. He's, as I said, almost 50 if not 50 by the book's end. This may or may not be his last hurrah, as it has no 'obvious' ending. Actually, I feel like the end if sort of a cop-out as well. But also, I have no clue if this is the end of Chinaski's 'series'. As it was written in '71, I kind of doubt it. But. All that is for another time!

Ah, early on Chinaski happens to wander into a church that has showers and such. (Do all Roman-Catholic churches have showers? Is that why I'd be surprised by that?) Chinaski, always an alchie, drinks the wine, you know, the wine for communion. Then he debates on taking a shower, but eventually decides not to as he imagines what the headlines would look like if someone were to find him: "MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH" (22). HAHAHA. Can you imagine? Though I'm not sure why the 'naked' moniker is necessary--don't most people shower naked? No? Am I doing it wrong!? Crud.

One incredibly sad bit involves an elderly mailman named GG. He had worked so long on one particular route that the kids loved him, he brought candy for them, the parents knew he was a nice old man. A new woman moves to the neighborhood, is unaware of this behavior, and accuses GG of child molestation. Poor guy, that would happen. All of the scenes with him are pretty depressing, as he's so old that he's literally just slowing down. What's even worse, is no one seems to care but, of all people, Chinaski.

"'All right now, you've got a good job. Keep your nose clean and you've got the security the rest of your life.' 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 raps. No losses at the race track. Free medical attention... Free burial" (66). Well... he has a point...

Ah, yes. You remember when Palin made her comment about Russia? Apparently she's a Bukowski fan: A postal office head is trying to get the mailmen revved up to work. As he claims, "'EACH EXTRA YOU STICK BEYOND DUTY HELPS DEFEAT THE RUSSIANS!'" (76). (Keep in mind, this was written and set during the Cold War.) But, before he tells them that, he shows the men a map of the world--paying special attention to Russia and Alaska's proximity. As he says, "'That's Alaska!" And there they are! Looks almost as if they could jump across, doesn't it?'" (76). Hehe.

My absolute favorite scene is when Chinaski decides to celebrate his job by making escargot for his then-wife, Joyce. She gets sick eating them because she is disgusted by them--moreover, by their "'tiny little a--holes" (87). It's just so funny. And, of course, Chinaski's comeback to that is hilarious as well--the best part is most likely when he shouts "'ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH!'" (87), though his whole spiel is hilarious. I can't even do the scene justice. If nothing else, at least read this scene whilst in your local bookstore. I literally laugh so hard I cry.

The scene that makes me most angry is close by as well. Joyce mistakenly buys a mentally retarded dog. Now, the dog is a handful, but any dog would be. It still loves her, as she should it. What makes me so mad is that she's in her stilettos, and the puppy wanders up to her a licks her ankle. She kicks it in the stomach with the pointy end of her shoes (the front). I can honestly say few things I have read disgusted or angered me more than that passage. Every time I read it I just want to jump in the book and slap her. What a disgusting worm of a human.

"'What's the sin in being poor?'" (111).

Chinaski, making the move on yet another woman, asks about her husband. She's divorced, and she says he was 'no good', as all he ever did was drink and bet on horses. It's very clear she doesn't know Chinaski that well....

"Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love" (155).

Anyway, as for the end--have you ever read The BFG by Roald Dahl? And at the end, you remember, it's revealed that the BFG himself 'wrote' the book. That's basically what is implied at the end of this book. I mean, that Chinaski 'wrote' the book, not the BFG. What a cheap ending. But maybe I'm just angry that things were turning out okay for Chinaski. I am pretty terrible. **

I watched the entire Twilight Zone series over the past three weeks. It is amazing. If you have never seen The Twilight Zone, go. Now. Now. I mean, it's not like I ever had any doubts about its awesomeness. I've just experienced it all now. Of course, there are lemon episodes--the last episode made me not mourn The Twilight Zone's end--that one where they sell the car that tells the truth to Stalin (or another powerful man of the USSR at the time) because he just happens to be in the sticks of the US--'Black Leather Jackets' was a pretty dumb episode--the one that I swear 'Jumanji' ripped off of--et cetera. But truly, the good outweighs the bad and Rod Serling you're a genius, bro.



**I told Robby D I preferred The Road to All the Pretty Horses and he asked me if I like infants roasted on spits. Uh, yeah, who doesn't? You know how I roll, G. Uhm, I mean, D.