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"It begun as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter delights are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he in some way drags his hangover out of bed each dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day tryouts of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers. This classic 1971 novel—the one that catapulted it is author to national fame—is the perfective introduction to the grimly hysterical world of legendary writer, poet, and Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski and his fictional alter ego, Chinaski.

About the Author

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, a heap of would claim, it is most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his firstborn story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and started out writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He passed from physical life in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Most helpful client reviews

167 of 170 humans found the following review helpful.
A nightmarish look at the postal service
By Michael J. Mazza
Charles Bukowski's novel "Post Office" is the first-person account of Henry Chinaski, a hard-drinking gambler and womanizer who goes to work for the United States Postal Service in Los Angeles. The story follows his experiences at the post office, weaving them together with his accounts of romantic affairs, sexual encounters, drinking, and gambling. Chinaski's life is full of encounters with respective unsavory, tragic, or foolish characters.

"Post Office" is the uttermost "I hate this job" story. It's likewise an intriguing, and highly unflattering look at a quintessential American institution. Bukowski's prose style is crude, rude, and raw; often times very funny, on occasion shocking, and now and again poignant. But always highly readable. Bukowski efficaciously evokes a imaginativeness of a mind-numbing, soul-killing workplace that is ruled by a petty bureaucracy.

On one level, "Post Office" seems to have much in mutual with a classic "social protest" novel like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," which also portrays the suffering and degradation experienced by the working person. But ultimately, "Post Office" seems like another species of novel altogether. Bukowski tells his story in a matter-of-fact style; he doesn't seem to care when it comes to offending or impressing anyone, and seems to offer no social agenda. He just tells it like it is. A arousing and attention holding book by an author who, I more and more believe, is veritably in a class all his own.

95 of 101 persons found the following review helpful.
Bukowski's Classic Novel
By Mark Begley
This is the one, the book that launched Bukowski beyond little press cultdom, the book that launched Black Sparrow past it is modest position in the publishing world, and it is the book that to this day still initiates readers into the wild, wild realm of Henry Chinaski. This is the original Buk book I ever read, and remains my all time favorite. Is it his best book? No, my vote would go to HAM ON RYE for that, but it is, in my opinion, his wildest and most fun read of all! Along with CATCHER IN THE RYE, CATCH 22, and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, POST OFFICE must be regarded, and taught, as a CLASSIC American comic masterpiece! Kudos to any high school lit teacher or college prof with the balls to make this book required reading. If you've never read Bukowski, this is the place to start. If you've read all of Bukowski, and there are numerous of you out there, read this one again...just for the hell of it. Why not?

25 of 25 persons found the following review helpful.
----> RAW AND REAL <---- a outstanding Amazon pick!
By John J. Ryan
Novels like this are rare, and writers like Charles Bukowski are one in a million. The word "authentic" comes to mind; his writing conveys a raw honestness and much necessitated non-mainstream point-of-view. Bukowski is the voice of dissent, the marginally employed, creatively frustrated working joe. Like the bird in the cage, his spirit is trapped in a world steeped in bureaucracy and bullsh*t.

Post Office covers Bukowski's 12 years as a postal employee and it follows his difficult working life, which echoes the working life and foilings of millions. I can't support but think of David Henry Thoreau's widely known and esteemed quote (which applies to Bukowski): "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

Bukowski, in fact, preaches a sure kind of civil disobedience.

We're all raised to want the same things: family, material possesions, a house, "respectable" jobs. I think now more than ever, we need Bukowski, we need to challenge the status quo and not buy into a shoal culture of materialism at the cost of syndication our souls.

I commend "Post Office" highly, likewise his poetry, exceptionally "You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense" and "The Last Night Of The Earth Poems." In addition, I commend "A Working Stiff's Manifesto : A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember"

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