Nov/Dec 2007
The Bukowski Issue
Book review of the month . . .
Post Office
Author: Charles Bukowski
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Ecco (February 27, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061177571
ISBN-13: 978-0061177576
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
Book Description
"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.
About the Author
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 Andernach, Germany, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry when he was thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age seventy-three. During his lifetime he published over forty-five books of poetry and prose—many translated into more than a dozen languages. His worldwide popularity remains undiminished, and Ecco is proud to be publishing five posthumous collections of his work as well as a new selection of his later works, The Pleasures of the Damned, forthcoming in the fall of 2007.
Review
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 various unsavory, tragic, or ridiculous characters. "Post Office" is the ultimate "I hate this job" story. It's also an intriguing, and highly unflattering look at a quintessential American institution. Bukowski's prose style is crude, rude, and raw; often very funny, sometimes shocking, and sometimes poignant. But always highly readable. Bukowski effectively evokes a vision of a mind-numbing, soul-killing workplace that is ruled by a petty bureaucracy. On one level, "Post Office" seems to have much in common 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 about offending or impressing anyone, and seems to offer no social agenda. He just tells it like it is. A fascinating book by an author who, I increasingly believe, is truly in a class all his own.
Book review . . .
Women
Author: Charles Bukowski
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Ecco (February 27, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061177598
ISBN-13: 978-0061177590
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
Book Description
Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.
With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge.
About the Author
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 Andernach, Germany, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry when he was thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age seventy-three. During his lifetime he published over forty-five books of poetry and prose—many translated into more than a dozen languages. His worldwide popularity remains undiminished, and Ecco is proud to be publishing five posthumous collections of his work as well as a new selection of his later works, The Pleasures of the Damned, forthcoming in the fall of 2007.
Review
First off, this book will offend people. It will probably offend you. You need to be offended. You need to be shaken out of your complacency. You need to be smacked upside the head with the crude and vulgar beauty of Bukowski's life and prose. You should get an injection of his drunken, debauched lifestyle. You should read this book. This is the first Bukowski novel that I have read, on a recommendation from a friend. The man has a way with words. A true Hemingway in the way he gives insightful and penetrating descriptions of people, but never actually tells you what they are thinking. He is able to paint a deep character profile of all the many women in his life with a little dialogue and some crazy actions. Some may find it degrading towards women, but I don't feel that it is. Sure, he is sometimes crude, sometimes angry, sometimes insulting towards women, but he is equally so towards himself. If anything, I feel he shows the tragic sexual immaturity of both women and men. While his lifestyle may be on the extreme, and something that most of us have never even gotten close to, he demonstrates things that anyone who has been in a relationship can identify with. All in all, I don't think Bukowski was writing a book about relationships that people would identify with. That is far too cheesy and mid '90s flaky for him. I think this was more just a painful self-evisceration. I think he was tearing himself open, and laughing about it, and proudly showing off his darkest, and also his most beautiful, thoughts, actions, and emotions.
Book review . . .
Factotum
Author: Charles Bukowski
Paperback: 205 pages
Publisher: Black Sparrow Books (June 1975)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0876852630
ISBN-13: 978-0876852637
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.6 inches
Review
The quality of Bukowski's poetry is questionable. His short stories are very sharp, very desperate, very amused. Tthe short stories are what Bukowski did best, while his novels are of very uneven quality. This said, the three novels of Bukowski's trilogy (Factotum, Post Office, Women) are his best novels and factotum is the best of the three. Women was written and published in the late 1970s when Bukowski or his alter ego Henry Chinaski was already an establihsed professional writer. Post Office covers the years in which he Bukowski had a sort of regular job and regular life. Factotum is the story of the young Bukowski, the Bukowski that was rolling from a job to another, from a town to another, from a woman to another, in an impressive collections of failures--failed jobs, failed relationships, failed everything all told with a considerable amount of irony. It's a very interesting read, to say the least. Five stars.
Review #2
This is the third book of Bukowski's that I have read (the first two were "Post Office" and "Hollywood") and thus far it is my favorite.
This book is composed of a series of short passages, 87 total. This book is mostly about Henry Chinaski (meaning, for the most part, Charles Bukowski) drinking, having sex with women who drink, and moving from job to job. I dont know how many jobs Chinaski has in this book, but he often holds them only long enough for a single one-page section.
If there is any unity in terms of story and plot in this book, it is found in the women, such as Jan and Laura, who manage to stay in Chinaski's life for a few jobs; the women serve to string together the sections.
More significant than any plot are the various interwoven themes that Bukowski deals with, such as futility, solitary existence, and death (all themes that might lead us to link Bukowski with existentialist philosophy). These ideas (among others) are all related, and also related to the ways in which they are expressed, namely, through alcohol, cheap sex, disgust towards humanity, and peacefulness in the strangest situations-- and of course, Henry Chinaski's inability to hold a job or even have any desire to do so. On one hand, this book is a quick and light read; on the other hand, a close read that keeps in mind the interplay between the different themes involved truly exposes the genius of Bukowski.
Overall, this is a book that for the most part ends where it begins (it begins with Chinaki arriving in New Orleans and "looking for the poor section" and ends in a go-go bar, with Chinaski holding his last 38 cents), but this circularity, i find, is intimate to the theme of futility: why go anywhere? why do anything? As Bukowski writes in the movie "Barfly", "Who made up this rule that everybody has to 'be somebody'?" Chinaski doesn't refuse to "be somebody" (remember, he has a great will to write), but he refuses to do it in terms set by other people; he refuses to define himself in terms of occupation, and other surface illusions--as to be somebody in such a way, he finds, is far too confining. On a side note, it seems as if Bukowski lifted a lot of material from this book when writing the script for "Barfly," as Laura becomes Wanda in the film and both the book and the film have Wilbur, among other similarities. Overall, this is a fine book that is both an enjoyable read and constantly impresses the reader with clever insights into what we often take as ordinary.