Charles Bukowski’s Post Office and THE AUTHOR by The Author are, on the surface, wildly different novels. One is about a washed-up drunk scraping by in a dead-end government job; the other follows a nameless aspiring artist trying to claw his way into Hollywood in pursuit of fame. But beneath their differences, both novels explore the same essential question:
What happens when you know you’re destined for something more—but the world refuses to see it?
Bukowski’s Post Office is a grim, hilarious, unflinching portrayal of life at the bottom. It follows Henry Chinaski, a Bukowski stand-in who works soul-crushing shifts at the postal service, drinks himself into oblivion, and barely functions as a human being. Chinaski knows he’s not meant for this kind of life, but he’s also too apathetic, too resigned, to fight his way out.
The Author, in contrast, refuses to accept his status as a nobody. He’s ambitious. Hungry. He’s convinced he’s destined for greatness, that he just needs to get inside the right room, meet the right people, make the right moves. In his demented mind, though he desires to be an author, he first needs to become a famous actor to have any shot at writing books that people care about. As THE AUTHOR unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that the game he’s playing is just as futile as Chinaski’s. The only difference is that he still believes in the illusion.
One man spends his days sorting mail. The other spends his chasing fame. But they are both trapped—by systems that don’t care about them, by cycles they can’t escape, by dreams that will never deliver what they promise.
One of Post Office’s most memorable qualities is how it revels in the monotony of work. Chinaski’s days are a brutal cycle of sorting mail, carrying heavy bags, following mindless rules, and getting screamed at by bosses who don’t even pretend to respect him. It’s dehumanizing, but it’s also absurd. Chinaski’s response is to lean into his degradation—he drinks, gambles, sleeps around, and generally makes his life as messy as possible, as if to prove to himself that he’s more than just his job.
The Author, on the other hand, is not subjected to soul-crushing labor. His suffering is more psychological. His work—the work of trying to become someone—is just as exhausting, just as degrading, but it’s fueled by a different delusion. Instead of accepting his fate like Chinaski, The Author keeps telling himself he’s right on the edge of success. If he plays the game just a little harder, if he hustles a little more, if he networks with the right people, he’ll break through.
Where Chinaski has resigned himself to being a loser, The Author is still desperately trying to win. But THE AUTHOR by The Author ultimately suggests that the difference between them is smaller than it seems. At a certain point, hustling for fame and blindly clocking into a meaningless job might be the same thing—both are illusions that keep you running in place.
Bukowski’s work is soaked in alcohol and bad decisions, and Post Office is no exception. Chinaski drinks his way through the novel, sabotaging relationships, blowing his money, and generally making his life harder than it already is. His problem isn’t just that he’s stuck in a miserable job. His problem is that he doesn’t really believe in anything—not love, not ambition, not even himself. His drinking isn’t rebellion. It’s escape. For him, only writing provides an honest, genuine outlet: is his one true love.
The Author’s vices, on the other hand, are less about giving up and more about fitting in. He drinks, he drugs, he parties, he hooks up with his cast of women not because he’s resigned to meaninglessness, but because he’s still chasing something. Validation. Status. Access. He’s still playing the game.
But the result is the same: a man who is slowly unraveling, a man who mistakes excess for fulfillment, a man who is running from himself.
Chinaski drinks to survive his dead-end existence. The Author drugs to transcend his own neurotic limitations and feel connected to something. Both men are using indulgence as a shield against the creeping feeling that maybe, deep down, they’re not who they thought they were.
For Bukowski, success was never the point. Post Office is a celebration of failure, of choosing not to play the game, of accepting your place on the margins and saying, fuck it. Chinaski isn’t trying to become rich, famous, or respected. He just wants to be left alone with his booze and his typewriter.
The Author, though, does want success. He needs it. His entire sense of self depends on it. And yet, for The Author, fame is a tool: either a confidence booster, or a safety net; either way it’s what he says he needs in order to sit down and finally write.
The Author could use some Chinaski in him, and Chinaski some of The Author. They’re both after literary greatness, each in his own backward-ass way.
If Post Office was a novel about the working-class man in mid-century America, THE AUTHOR by The Author is a novel about the social-media drenched, influencer-obsessed youth of today. Where Chinaski was suffocated by mind-numbing routine, The Author is suffocated by the endless potential of the digital age—an era where anyone can, theoretically, become a star.
But both novels arrive at the same bitter truth: the game is always rigged. Whether it’s the bureaucracy of the post office or the backroom deals of Hollywood, both systems are designed to break you.
Chinaski refuses to play. The Author thinks he can win.
And that’s what makes THE AUTHOR even more tragic. Because unlike Post Office, there’s no catharsis, no Bukowskian fuck you to the world. There’s just a man trying, failing, trying again—until there’s nothing left of him but the performance.
What happens then when the performance wins? Who are you then? How do you escape the construct your life has become?
