About this title: This legendary Henry Chinaski novel is now available in a newly repackaged trade paperback edition, covering the period of the author's alter-ego from the mid-1950s to his resignation from the United States Postal Service in 1969.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
Date Published: 2002-06-05
ISBN-13:9780876850862ISBN:0876850867
Description: Very Good. Clean trade paperback with light usage wear. Tight and square with no spine creases. Cover is light blue paper, and shows slight soiling from handling. Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa CA, 1999. Later printing. 196 pages. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ecco
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780061177576ISBN:0061177571
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Ecco Pr
Date Published: 2007-03-01
ISBN-13:9780061177576ISBN:0061177571
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780061177576. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Black Sparrow Pr
Date Published: 1980-06-01
ISBN-13:9780876850862ISBN:0876850867
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780876850862. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ecco
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780876850862ISBN:0876850867
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VIRGIN BOOKS Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780753518168ISBN:0753518163
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 176 pages. Henry chinaski is a lowlife loser with a hand-to-mouth existence. his menial post office day job supports a life of beer, one-night stands and racetracks. (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Black Sparrow Books
Date Published: 1980-06
ISBN-13:9780876850879ISBN:0876850875
Description: Good. Good title in good condition. Pages are clean and tight. Covers show some shelf wear and bumping. Satisfaction guaranteed. If item not as described, return for refund of purchase price. read more
Edition: First UK edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Melbourne House, London
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780861610273ISBN:086161027X
Description: Octavo, 160 pp. Hardbound red paper covered boards, gilt title at spine. Fine dust jacket with cartoon illustration to the front panel, large photo of Bukowski on the back. Minor bump to foot of spine, spot of discoloration to ffep, but otherwise about fine. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press 1971
Date Published: 1971
Description: ISBN. Trade Paperback. First Printing. Limited to 2000 copies. Good Condition. Tight sound copy with fade to covers and spine, water stain on back cover, brown spotting to edges, some light brown stains to a few interior pages, owner's inititials and date on first two front endpapers, red dye from back free endpaper has bled a bit to adjoiningpages caused by the afore mentioned water stain, rubs to edges and corners of covers. read more
Binding: Cloth
Publisher: London Magazine Editions, London
Date Published: 1974
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. A pretty copy of the 1974 1st UK edition. Near Fine in a bright, Near Fine, price-clipped dustjacket. Octavo, 149 pgs. The great Bukowski's very first novel. read more
Edition: First U.K. Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: London Magazine Editions, London
Date Published: 1974
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. First UK edition of the Buk's first and perhaps greatest novel. Fine in fine unclipped jacket, and uncommon thus. Highly recommended. read more
Edition: Later Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara
Date Published: 1984
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. Signed by Author Later printing from 1984 of the author's best known work. A fine copy in boards in fine acetate wrapper. This copy nicely INSCRIBED "For Mary (last name darkened out), This book about the worst job I ever had. Hope there are some laughs, Charles Bukowski" Also with his little man drawing below his signature. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, Los Angeles
Date Published: 1971
Description: Octavo. Original cloth-backed boards printed in red white and blue, red endpapers. Housed in a blue cloth slipcase. The odd spot to the odd page, spine rather faded, tips lightly rubbed, boards somewhat tanned and marked. Very good. First edition, first printing, signed issue being one of 250 numbered copies case bound and signed by the author. read more
"After years of struggling in the post office and the race track, Charles Bukowski wrote a stunning novel about a man who struggles at the post office and the racetrack.
With letters in his hands and a hangover in his head, protagonist Hank Chinaski spends the duration of Post Office (Ecco, ISBN: 0061177571, 1991) doing one of those two things in addition to sex. With a life that parallels that of creator Charles Bukowski, Chinaski toils away in the post office for years, wondering what can rebuild a broken man. And, more importantly, if any man is worth rebuilding.
Chinaski and Bukowski
Hank Chinaski and Hank Charles Bukowski can be used interchangeably, and both (or either, really) are the embodiment of freedom trying to exist in a society with an underlying sense of order permeating everything.
Chinaski appears in several other novels and short stories of Bukowski, such as Ham On Rye and Hot Water Music. Post Office doesn't show the details of growing up in angst as Ham On Rye does, nor does it show the near-satisfied old man that Chinaski would become, as seen in Hot Water Music. Instead, the reader finds Chinaski at a crossroads, building up to something better.
A Quickly Read Diary
This is such a sparse, quick read with an odd diary-type tone that a reader may not know what to make of it as she reads. The short chapters within the sections read exactly like journal entries: not too much detail, just enough to refresh the memory for later reading.
The Grime and Dirt of Hank Chinaski
Post Office gives the reader about a decade and a half of Chinaski's life in 200 pages (with a huge font that can easily be read in three hours or less). Chinaski is the sort of anti-hero who's hard to invent in writing. He doesn't care about anything he can't fight with, drink down, or pick up.
There are parts of the book that make Chinaski morally repulsive. His faux-rape of a mentally unstable woman is the most offending section, making it hard to like the guy. However, he can also be sweet, thinking of his daughter when he had a butcher's knife to his throat and having all of his relationships end in an state of neutrality. There's rarely hatred or love in his writing, despite his actions. He's just living, and really, what more can be asked of him?
This may not be the best writing ever, but that's hardly the point. People like Chinaski/Bukowski don't come along all that often, and to have this sort of a reference point in regard to purity and its clash with humanity is a gift that everyone should be grateful for."
"My first outing with a Charles Bukowski novel. No poetry of his in my past. I watched Barfly on cable about seven or eight years ago. That was my only previous exposure, and I can't remember a thing about that movie.
The book is a quick read. As you can see from my profile here, I consumed it in a day. His vocabulary is small, but that's what usually makes a book quick. The writing is punchy and terse.
The story, which is very auto-biographical, is highly entertaining. Bukowski/Chinaski is a rough and ready drunkard, working at the post office in order to buy booze, buy things for his women, and bet on horse races. Sounds riveting to me!
As this was Bukowski's first novel, I can't help but feel that it originally lacked a message, a purpose. Sure, the purpose is he took all this experience and made a novel out of it. Since he is now a renown author the message makes sense, but only in retrospect. Oh well, some people can predict the future I guess."
I like reading books with experiences far removed from my own.
I didn't like it so much at the beginning; it was hard to get a grip on the character - who I assume is a just slightly altered Bukoswki. I think it's that his D, JQ, and W wasn't as predictable or simple as I had expected.
It had echoes of a 110-page version of Catfish, the straight-forward, this-is-what-I-am, D-JQ-W novel.
Maybe I'm just geographically in the right location: probably the Northernmost part of the country to think it honestly is The South. I can see this being taken differently if I'd grown up in an urban metropolis. City Novel vs Southern Novel would be an interesting scenario.
For me, and possibly because of Catfish, the Southern stance is what it came across as - which I think yields a certain amount of innocenct, what-do-you-expect-from-me charm to its debauchery.
(I imagine this may be one of those authors where I only need to read one of the author's novels because they're all just revisions and reworkings of the same idea, but I'm going to give Ham and Factotum a try.)"
"Memoirs of a Dirty Old Man. That pretty much says it all about the book, the over fictionalized autobiography of a Henry Chinaski (that we all know if Charles Bukowski). Its the style of the "American Novel", like Hemingway, like Vonnegut. Its concise, direct to the point, and uses common everyday language to the best of its effect. Very similar to Hemingway, he has a rosy out view of life. Like Vonnegut, he slaps you around with poignant truisms. Unlike both, he is much more profane; very much like a funny old drunkard.
Personally, I hate the guy's poetry. I think poetry is something more than just a damn short story chopped up into verse. What I have to admit is that the guy is one hell of a writer.
I don't find his writing shocking at all, truth be told, I only find him sincere. In any case, this book is a fine example of the Laureate low life's work. I don't hold the drinking against him, who would? Without it, we would have never enjoyed his books. Besides that, who can really say to another man how he is supposed to live?"
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