Rating: 
Summary: Start here.
Review: Post Office provides an excellent introduction to Bukowski and will encourage you to pick up more of his work. His advice to struggling (or psuedo) writers "write what you know" is easily demonstrated in this novel. If you're not familiar with Buk, start here.
Rating: 
Summary: the proletariat in focus
Review: Visons of easy days and endless lays. Sorry Charles. Being a temp isn't the same as workin full time. Especially under the Stone. This book is one of Buk's best novels. It traces Chinaski from mailbox to box and lays clear the pain and anguish of being a drunk and trying to hold down a job at the post office of all places. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting Read
Review: If you haven't experienced personally the blues of working your life away, then Post Office might be a good book for you to read. Though, most of us who work ourselves to death are already familiar with what Chinaski has to cope with. I really enjoyed this book - it gave me some insight into why the word "postal" is a term used to describe the actions of someone who has been over the edge. Bukowski portrays just how difficult it can be work within the system, and even hints that perhaps he was better of going against the grain.
Rating:
Summary: This book is perfect
Review: This is the book that put Bukowski on the map. He is beautifully honest and brutally romantic. This book captures the personality of a man that is caught up in a worls full of sex alchohol and the dreaded post office. Bukowski spits out what he feels is the truth and let me tell you, it is pretty damn accurate. READ THIS BOOK!!!!! but do it with caution if you are a small child!
Rating:
Summary: Men, parakeets and the nature of work...
Review: There's nothing Americans take as seriously as making moneynor any more common way of getting it than by working forsomeone. So how come hardly anybody ever writes about this centerpiece of our lives? In 'typical' Bukowski style (brutal, frank, profane and with a lovely sense of noire humor) Hank has and the I'm sure the US Post Office is not amused. For about 11 years he actually did work for the PO. But the book is really about work: what it does to you, how this one man coped with it, etc. It could just as easily been titled The Office, The Shop or The Factory. The theme is universal.
Rating:
Summary: An Original! Don't Miss it!
Review: Charles Bukowski is definitely an American original. And this novel, written in only three weeks, after leaving his longest held job (of 12 years) at the Post Office, certainly provides evidence that he is one man who followed his own muse. What's obvious here and throughout his poetry is how different and unique an artist he is. While most writers and poets desperately seek out the accolades and "respect" bestowed from Academia, here's someone who CLEARLY couldn't care less about Academic validation. His work is honest and real and RAW! Full of emotion, street language, and open disgust and the view that life isn't only lived by the "winners." Takes all kinds. And most of us, let's admit it, aren't "winners." What makes his view easy to stomach, even enjoyable, is his great HUMOR, and simplicity of style, and bluntness. His great lesson as an artist and as a human being is this: Lose your sense of humor and YOU ARE DONE FOR! Laughter makes the loneliness and disappointment of this world tolerable (okay, a little booze helps too: at least takes off the edge). But never forget to laugh, frequently and LOUDLY. And also remember (as you are laughing) Bukowski's unspoken motto: every dog has its day! In this work and others, Bukowski cuts through all the crap, doesn't have the time to be "polite" or "gentile": he gives it to you straight. Rude, tough-talking, often hilarious language and all: he's a great, yes FUN, storyteller. And as this work proves, he remains the great American outsider, a truth teller -- and his work, this book, Post Office, speaks more directly to me than most Pulitzer prize winning, Academic praised books! Post Office is impossible to forget for its honest representation of the drudgery and mind-numbing repetition and tedium (and, yes, bulls*it) of ordinary life. It's also a celebration of the tenacity of a man who refused to cave in and conform! Don't miss reading this great book! Then check out Ham On Rye and his poetry books, like Sometimes You Get So Alone... and Love is a Dog From Hell, which are also wonderfully unpretentious. Another recent Amazon pick I liked was The Losers Club by Richard Perez, which others have mentioned in connection to Bukowski, part of neo-Bukowski school I guess. Anyway, that's enough from me. Read and I'll shut up.
Rating:
Summary: Priority Mail
Review: We read and discussed two books for our book club last session: Post Office by Charles Bukowski, and Little New York B-stard by M. Dylan Raskin; I've taken part in book clubs for the last fifteen years, and NEVER have two books sparked more passionate debates and attracted so much praise and enthusiasm as these two odd, captivating books have. Just to compare and contrast a little, both authors walk the talk they're talking. Neither Bukowski nor Raskin are or ever were wealthy people, in fact Raskin is only in his early twenties and we learn at the end of Little New York B-stard he's working a regular job at some "good-for-nothing" library. Both authors write in very compelling conversational tones and display a great deal of "street" smarts, and both have a greater message to deliver than what meets the eye. Where Bukowski seems to want to captivate the literary world, Raskin seems to want to conquer it and tear it down. Personally, I enjoyed Little New York B-stard ever so slightly more than Post Office - it had more venom and attitude, but both of these books are terrific, inspiring works of literature. I highly recommend both of them.
Rating:
Summary: Insufficient postage
Review: "Degenerate" is a word that's fallen out of favor in recent years. Once a staple of 50s beat cops and squares, it now sounds harsh, judgmental, and cruel.
But it's the perfect word to describe Harry Chinaski, "Post Office"'s protagonist and narrator, a dysfunctional wreck of a man who works at an organization that's supposed to be neat, tidy, efficient and dependable.
Chinaski has a drinking problem. And a gambling problem. He has problems with authority, problems with women, problems with money, problems with just about everything besides general degeneracy. Degeneracy's something he's very very good at.
He's not bad at sorting mail, though, come to think of it. He can sort mail, deliver it, memorize routes, and generally do whatever it takes to keep his job. That is, until the aforementioned problems--alcoholism, authority issues, etc.--get in the way. Then it's time for 10 rounds of toe-to-toe burecratic boxing. Or long bouts at the racetrack. Or any number of career diversions.
Perhaps this is the biggest problem with "Post Office." Though brisk, funny, and an engaging read, it seems less a novel than a collection of amusing little anecdotes, with only the barest arc of a story line. Over the course of the book, Harry Chinaski gets older, and his drinking problem gets a bit worse, and he has a kid, but other than that, little changes. In the beginning was the degenerate, and the degenerate was made flesh, and he stayed a degenerate until the end.
XXXXX--PLOT SPOILER--XXXXX
It's also bothersome every time an author ends a book with something along the lines of "and then I sat down to write this book." I mean, really, people. Couldn't someone put that at the beginning or the middle? Just to be different from all those other books where it's at the end? I digress.
XXXXX--END OF PLOT SPOILER--XXXXX
Anyway, don't be a square and avoid it. But don't depend on it to blow you away, either.
Rating:
Summary: Honest and Raw
Review:
Bukowski is an acquired taste. His bluntness and rawness is not for everyone. He's NOT a mainstream author; and nowhere is this more evident than in POST OFFICE, which is an autobiographical account of his 12 wage slave years at the post office. Bukowski's greatness is that he writes about the drudgery of menial work and how it can demean a person, suck his soul. Please check out this great book -- and don't be put off by the harsh language and seemingly crudeness. Keep reading!
Also recommended: THE LOSERS CLUB: Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez (in which Bukowski appears as a character), HAM ON RYE by Charles Bukowski.
Rating:
Summary: Charles Bukowski, THE BEST
Review: This novel is one of the best I own. I may have read it over 50 times at this point! Follow the Buk as he spends years working for the U.S. Postal service and enjoy all his insanely funny stories!
For more Bukowski reviews and recommendations, check out www.LosAngelesPop.com
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