PO'ed: Post Office: A View From Below

Shhhh! R.J. Stanton, the writer of the novel, POed: Post Office, A View From Below is talking with the novel’s main character, Bo Morgan. Let’s listen in:

Bo: Nobody’s going to read this book.
RJ: You have to have faith, Bo. There’s room for our stuff out there.
Bo: Yeah, well, you work at the post office for a while and see where your faith ends up. All they want is books by Amy Tan…or J.K. Rowling. People are sick of hearing white guys whine about their lives.
RJ: Not true. They’ll want to read about how you tried to do something. How you became a supervisor so you could try to beat an environment that is unlike any other. How you thought you could make a difference. You were the R.P. McMurphy of the post office.
Bo: No I wasn’t. I didn’t win. McMurphy won. He changed people’s lives. I lost.  
RJ: You know and I know those crazy bastards lives went right back to the way they were a week after McMurphy got his lobotomy. Your story is more realistic. They only life you saved was your own—a modern day hero….You chose yourself over the machine. You won. Your brains weren’t whipped into mush. You would have died a metaphorical death if you stayed.
Bo: Ahh. I get it. That’s the point of your book.
RJ: Yes—the literary importance.
Bo: Hmmm. I wouldn’t get to high on yourself there, RJ; everybody is going to think it’s just a satire. 

R.J. Stanton worked for the postal service from 1997 until 2004. He started out as a carrier and finished as a Labor Relations Specialist. He holds a cum laude degree in English from the University of Massachusetts and a masters in Human Resource Development from American International College. He lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts with his girlfriend, Andrea Chernovetz, and his two boys, Charlie and Sammy. This is his second novel. His first, The Outlier, is a novel of detective fiction. It was published in 2001. It reads like greased lightning.