On Women, Booze, and Bureaucracy: Bukowski's Post Office

Charles Bukowski. Photo by Carl via Flickr CC BY 2.0

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I knew nothing of Bukowski until his work was recommended to me, especially his poetry, but I opted for his first novel instead. I recall watching Mickey Rourke and Fay Dunaway in Barfly, but I was just out of high school and it bored me. I found Woody Allen movies to be boring, then, too. Today, Woody Allen's movies are my favourite, so it might be worth giving Mickey another chance soon. Post Office reads like a cross between Jack Kerouac and a beatnik version of John Steinbeck. The cover blurb suggests his punctuation is all over the shop, but aside from a few instances of bizarrely-placed periods, it wasn't as distracting as I thought. It was also meant to be a story about American low-lifes, but that, too, seemed to be a misnomer. The protagonist, Henry Chinaski, is an anti-hero par excellence. His womanising, boozing, and gambling may have been somewhat shocking in 1971, but by today's standards, his conventional vices are more Dean Martin than Ozzy Osbourne. Even Kerouac's Sal Paradise was more hard-core than Chinaski. I'd even go so far to say that Chinaski was a moralising anti-hero, with moments of compassion and Protestant-like work ethic interrupting his otherwise conventional shenanigans. At the same time, much like Burt Reynolds in the opening scene of The Longest Yard (1974), Chinaski isn't, let's say, very chivalrous. But then he is a dog-lover, so his crassness balances itself out somewhat. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in one sitting. There are some elements of unconventional literature, such as an entire chapter of official letters from the post office, but these are used cleverly and the reader will sympathise with Chinaski's boredom with bureaucracy. One gets the sense that Chinaski is not only physically missing while one reads this part, and the innovation serves its purpose well. I am not sure if I am ready to start reading poetry in detail, but this work, along with my current reading of Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History with one chapter devoted to Dante and Shakespeare focusing on "The Hero as Poet", has piqued my interest. If one can suspend current realities and overlook the attitudes of the past that are distasteful in the present, then the work is enjoyable. But what excites me is that this is Bukowski's first novel, written at age fifty. His protagonist is about my age now at the end of the book. Typically, the anti-hero has upset all the other characters by about age 30, and the masterpiece was authored by some 23 year-old genius. Rather, Bukowski leaves me with at least a sliver of hope that I haven't squandered my last 47 years entirely.

View all my reviews

Love in the Time of Hollywood

Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald 1921. Photo: Smithsonian Institution via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

Magnetism by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories is #12 of Penguin's "Great Loves" series. It includes three I have not read before: The Sensible Thing, The Bridal Party, and Magnetism, along with the classic early flapper story, Bernice Bobs Her Hair. Published in 1928, these were the very early days of Hollywood, yet Magnetism captures the celebrity spirit in a way that is all too familiar today. One can imagine, however, the low-tech environment where famous actors still roamed the suburbs, startling elevator boys with their good looks and charm. Although Hemingway chastised Fitzgerald for writing short stories for money, instead of focusing on masterpieces like Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald's short stories are far from commercial ephemera that have lost their meaning in the present. It strikes me that the only difference is, back then, only the wealthy could experience such dramas as being considered dull and trying to project oneself as desirable, witty, and fun, whereas now almost any average consumer strives for the same thing. This is a very quick read, but Fitzgerald's work doesn't disappoint. It is only a shame that his short stories are scattered far and wide - as he would have delivered them to individual magazines in an effort to earn money - that a devoted Fitzgerald fan must constantly search for ever-more Fitzgerald stories to read. Nonetheless, part of the fun is discovering, from time to time, what seems to be an bottomless well of Fitzgerald ephemera still waiting to be discovered.

View all my reviews

On Social Media Living Up to its Promises with Raechel Johns

Associate Professor Raechel Johns

Associate Professor Raechel Johns is a marketing specialist and Head of the School of Management at the University of Canberra. Raechel and I have been colleagues for many years. We even starred in a marketing video about ten years ago. So I asked Raechel about social media and marketing and how I was disappointed that social media had not lived up to its early promises.

Is social media any good? Or has it been over-run by commercial interests?

Raechel talks about the Gartner Hype Cycle and the "trough of disillusionment", but also says that social media provides opportunities for building social capital, learning new ideas, and creating social value.

The podcast (and our video from many years ago) are below.