Just don’t expect any hymns to the pony express. Two of the most notable ex-mailmen in American letters, Richard Wright and Charles Bukowski, attacked their former employers in early novels. In “Cesspool”—later retitled “Lawd Today!"—Wright poured his experience as a Chicago mail clerk into the bleak story of a Windy City postman who brutalizes his wife. (Fortunately, Wright was single.)
Three decades later, Bukowski channeled 12 years as a mail carrier to write “Post Office,” described by one critic as “the ultimate I-hate-my-job story.” But it was William Faulkner who expressed his unhappiness while still on the job. In 1924, the future author of “The Sound and the Fury” was fired as a Mississippi postmaster. The charges: throwing out mail—and writing on government time.
