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    Post Office: A Novel
    Post Office: A Novel
    Post Office: A Novel
    Audiobook4 hours

    Post Office: A Novel

    Written by Charles Bukowski

    Narrated by Christian Baskous

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    About this audiobook

    ""It began 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 pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers. This classic 1971 novel—the one that catapulted its author to national fame—is the perfect introduction to the grimly hysterical world of legendary writer, poet, and Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski and his fictional alter ego, Chinaski.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 13, 2013
    ISBN9780062302922
    Author

    Charles Bukowski

    Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.

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    Reviews for Post Office

    4/5

    183 ratings50 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I first encountered Charles Bukowski in my late teens. This is possibly the best way to encounter him - be blown away by the direct, rough prose, not completely understanding why and how he is so good. Then, returning to him years - decades - later, I am still fascinated by how seemingly simple stories of a man addicted to drink (especially to drink), women, and gambling can actually tease out meaningful insights about humanity. We are no heroes, we learn from Post Office, but among the pettiness and the depravity and the bickering and the vanity and the egoism there still are moments of kindness, and moments when the light of God shines through the cracks of the broken world.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A good summation of life and work. What you're willing to give up or put up with to earn a dollar. Even when you're self employed, you aren't really working for yourself but working to pay the mortgage company, the government etc. But working for yourself, you don't have to put up with some flunky supervisor accusing you of being inefficient or taking 10 minutes longer for your break than you were supposed to... Reading this book, needless to say, did not make me long for my days of working in offices.
    • 2/5
      Don't get the Bukowskistas, nor their figurehead.
    • 3/5
      Not the complete book. Stopped working less than midway through
    • 4/5
      This was an enjoyable, easy read for me. My first Bukowski novel, though I had been familiar with his poetry prior to reading this. Quite funny at times. Unexpectedly poignant in at least one section. I prefer Kerouac, but I still plan to read more Bukowski in the future.
    • 5/5
      A quick read, quite enjoyable, I like Bukowski's style, the pages turn themselves. No philosophical deepness, no thinking about what this or that means, just enjoying a great book, spending a nice afternoon.
    • 4/5
      it is what is it is. i like that. no bullshit. no nonsense. Some realities are bad and ugly, and there is nothing nice about them. They are, nonetheless, Real. In a world of vanities and illusions, that has the value of the rare things.
    • 3/5
      It was my first intro to Bukowski. It starts a bit slow but gets some traction later. It was fun a some points but a bit mundane. It didnt change my life. It is an OK book, not bad but not great as well.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book and fantastic narration. Bukowski is at once extremely crude and extremely artful with his language. Brutally honest and compelling. Christian Baskous does a fantastic job with narration. Highly recommended.

      Also check out Ham on Rye.
    • 5/5
      Chinaski!!! Read this on my first deployment. Took me back
    • 4/5
      This was an enjoyable, easy read for me. My first Bukowski novel, though I had been familiar with his poetry prior to reading this. Quite funny at times. Unexpectedly poignant in at least one section. I prefer Kerouac, but I still plan to read more Bukowski in the future.
    • 4/5
      Thats a damn good narration! ha hz ha ha hz
    • 4/5
      Henry Chinaski is a heavy drinking, womanising, race track frequenting low-life, who works at the post office. The story follows his menial existence of twelve-hour night shifts, sorting post, delivering mail, observing his fellow colleagues and facing countless disciplinary measures, for offences such as missing work and refusing to follow protocol.Chinaski’s free time consists of alcohol consumption, an infatuation with the horses and relationships, both casual and long term, with a succession of women, including Betty; a tragic, divorced alcoholic, as well as the nymphomaniac, parakeet owning, independently wealthy Joyce, and a war protesting hippy, a liaison that results in a daughter.This, Bukowski’s first novel, is an autobiographical account of the period in his life prior to writing Post Office. His trademark visceral literary style and economy of the written word is in evidence throughout, as he adroitly describes the banality, hardship and dehumanisation of unskilled drudgery. Utilising a brutal, blunt and fast-paced narrative, replete with black humour, Post Office is at times sad and poignant.Though Chinaski is a loathsome, repugnant creature, with a cynical outlook, vulgar and seedy habits, misogynistic attitudes, and an unrelenting craving for the most base urges, the reader is able to identify with him, due to his inherent humanness and unerring ability not to seek pity, in the face of what is ultimately a lonely and largely unrewarding existence.
    • 5/5
      Obscenely funny-you don’t have to be postal to “get it”, but it sure helps.
    • 5/5
      Wow. This book made me feel. Real feelings: dirty, glad, miserable, ecstatic and empty. I would compare it favourably against Kerouac: he also makes me feel so much when I'm reading, but afterwards leaves me feeling somewhat cheated and hollow; Bukowski is more honest. Each line was simple but delicious for the mind.
    • 4/5
      Great for disgruntled employees everywhere. Is it any wonder that so many postal workers went nuts and started killing people?
    • 3/5
      I knew nothing of Bukowski until his work was recommended to me, especially his poetry, but I opted for his first novel instead. I recall watching Mickey Rourke and Fay Dunaway in Barfly, but I was just out of high school and it bored me. I found Woody Allen movies to be boring, then, too. Today, Woody Allen's movies are my favourite, so it might be worth giving Mickey another chance soon. Post Office reads like a cross between Jack Kerouac and a beatnik version of John Steinbeck. The cover blurb suggests his punctuation is all over the shop, but aside from a few instances of bizarrely-placed periods, it wasn't as distracting as I thought. It was also meant to be a story about American low-lifes, but that, too, seemed to be a misnomer. The protagonist, Henry Chinaski, is an anti-hero par excellence. His womanising, boozing, and gambling may have been somewhat shocking in 1971, but by today's standards, his conventional vices are more Dean Martin than Ozzy Osbourne. Even Kerouac's Sal Paradise was more hard-core than Chinaski. I'd even go so far to say that Chinaski was a moralising anti-hero, with moments of compassion and Protestant-like work ethic interrupting his otherwise conventional shenanigans. At the same time, much like Burt Reynolds in the opening scene of The Longest Yard (1974), Chinaski isn't, let's say, very chivalrous. But then he is a dog-lover, so his crassness balances itself out somewhat. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in one sitting. There are some elements of unconventional literature, such as an entire chapter of official letters from the post office, but these are used cleverly and the reader will sympathise with Chinaski's boredom with bureaucracy. One gets the sense that Chinaski is not only physically missing while one reads this part, and the innovation serves its purpose well. I am not sure if I am ready to start reading poetry in detail, but this work, along with my current reading of Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History with one chapter devoted to Dante and Shakespeare focusing on "The Hero as Poet", has piqued my interest. If one can suspend current realities and overlook the attitudes of the past that are distasteful in the present, then the work is enjoyable. But what excites me is that this is Bukowski's first novel, written at age fifty. His protagonist is about my age now at the end of the book. Typically, the anti-hero has upset all the other characters by about age 30, and the masterpiece was authored by some 23 year-old genius. Rather, Bukowski leaves me with at least a sliver of hope that I haven't squandered my last 47 years entirely.
    • 3/5
      A tell it like it is novel, the author is direct even crude, but honest and spicy. A chronicle of his days at the USPS, the author was definitely not a man to fit into the “norm” of society. Refreshing to hear someone who frankly gives zero fucks about the system but when he does care, he cares deeply.
    • 2/5
      This is a good book if you want a fast read that requires no thinking. I happened across something else by the author, read a short bio and decided to check out his first novel before reading the poetry. I think 35 years ago I might have thought this a good book for more than not thinking. Reading it as an adult, it's pretty thin and only occasionally funny. It does not make me want to read his poetry.
    • 4/5
      Set in the Beatnik era, Post Office is an almost autobiographical account of Bukowski's time spent working for the US postal service. This is a window into the mundane, ordinary life of blue collar anti-hero Henry Chinaski. Chinaski is one of life's losers - a drinker with an aversion to authority and a general lack of commitment to anything. Despite himself, he can't help continually coming full circle back to his dead-end job at the postal sorting office. Essentially this is an account of an ordinary life at a time when responsibilities mattered little and self-satisfaction was the priority. Not to be read with a feminist or politically correct head on (expect plenty of 'pussy' and 'tits' references), this is a book about a snapshot in time in Everydayville. You may not agree with many of Chinaski's ideals and turns of phrase, but it is a clever book of dark humour and cynicism against the System.I enjoyed this much more than On the Road - if you enjoy Updike's Rabbit series this may be one for you.4 stars - good fun, not to be taken too seriously.
    • 3/5
      I've read a lot of Charles Bukowski, but this is his only novel that I own. the plot line is pretty simple, I man gets a job in a Post Office sorting mail into bundles for the letter carriers to deliver. A lot of people, even me used to do this work. It was mild public service, and It paid reasonably well, and the work was relatively clean. He meets a girl they get married, and work out pretty well. then she leaves him. He reverts to his former hard drinking ways, and starts to win at the horse races. People also used to gamble at race tracks, horse races, on which particular horse would win. It was complex, and for a change our hero has long winning streak. The streak does end, he goes back to the Post Office...and four years later, he resigns. Yet it is a compelling story and very tightly written. It you want to know what a factory job can be like, "Post Office" has the right delivery.
    • 4/5
      Bukowski, that amazing poet, was a postman for most of his life. These are real stories from his life. Like all industries, careers, etc. there is so much going on that you don't know unless you do it.
    • 5/5
      This is my first foray into Bukowski's novels, having now been acquainted with his poetry and shorter prose for a couple of years. The hallmarks of his shorter fiction are all present here: the down and out protagonist surrounded by a cast of off the wall characters, and the pace doesn't let up one bit. Bukowski's strong and unique narrative voice holds you from the first page until the very end. Beautiful humor and story emanating from the laughing gutters of skid row.
    • 3/5
      When Bukowski writes human existance becomes a big mistake! if there is love you might find it inbetween the lines! here a man works as a post office clerk, changing more the woman and the horses he bets on than his shirt. I would not read it again...
    • 5/5
      Masterful. The futility of mundane but gainful employment at the expense of meaning is portrayed with Bukowski's trademark humour and style. This is Bukowski's first novel and a decade of his life in a nutshell. Hank Chinaski is often offensive and insensitive, at other times gentle and insightful, it matters little, original writers are a rarity and Bukowski stands out as an innovator without peer.
    • 4/5
      I decided to read my first Bukowski after I heard that his books are the most commonly stolen in bookstores. I enjoyed this one; lots of funny moments.
    • 5/5
      Honest and brutal account of a flawed working man in the brutal crazy working world of the USA Postal service of the 19 50's/60's. Lucid and honed poetic prose writing at its best
    • 2/5

      6/10.

      Fairly comical life-story of a drunkard and his working life at the post office.

    • 4/5
      An author who tells it like it is with a witty style and a smooth delivery takes us on an adventure through the post office as a carrier and later a clerk. Hilarious and straight forward.
    • 3/5
      I liked this book very easy to read. This is the story of Hank Chinaski a bit of a deadbeat who enjoys betting at the race track, drinking and loose women. He also works at the US post office to earn some money. Some of the tales made me laugh as I have in the past done some dead end jobs and dealt with silly bosses.