Post Office - Janko (1 Viewer)

Has anyone ever discovered Janko's true identity?

Did he ever get the chance to go to New York and shake the hands of the publishers?
 
I'm probably reading too much into the character, but if it's not real, it may be an imaginary person crafted by Bukowski's damaged nerves.
Like a peppy Bukowski who's into the job but still wants to make it big with a novel.
Janko was writing about the post office but he ended up deviating the book into a bad romance to sell, like bands did with power ballads back in the 80s to push their albums.
 
We don't know if Janko really existed. Bukowski writes about him in multiple places (P.O. of course and a couple of poems, if I remember correctly) so it could be.

But I don't recall any mention of the Janko character in the letters, so maybe he is entirely made up or combined of different events, who knows. Bear in mind, this is fiction.

I always liked the line though: "VAN GOGH'S BROTHER GAVE HIM FREE PAINTS!"
 
Are there mentions of Janko in poems? I'd love to read that.

Anyhow, maybe he wrote Janko in as some form of comic relief to add yet another antagonist that made him go crazy. Maybe.

I'd love to get my hands on a roster from the L.A. Terminal Annex to check out the real names (other than Dom Muto, of course).
 
A sightly different telling of the same story is in About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter, a poem in The Roominghouse Madrigals, so seems like it was based on a real event. Or maybe he was just really proud of this punchline haha

Punchline.jpg
 
[...] even at the post office he had to deal with the travails of other writers. Joe Links (not his real name), a man he worked alongside, had been trying to write for years. A short, wiry man with small, intense eyes, he had the kind of attitude toward writing that Hank did his best to avoid: he wanted money. Links had written a novel that publishers kept sending back. Hank told Links that he should write out of his own life experiences, forgetting whether or not his prose would earn him money. "I told him a couple of times to hit the road. . .but he lacked the nerve and I gave up trying."
from Bukowski, A life by Neeli Cherry Cherkovski
 

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