Apparently, Post Office is something of a classic, but I had never heard of it before and had stumbled upon Bukowski only in passing. Immediately I was reminded of the song "Bukowski" by Modest Mouse, which has the memorable refrain "Who would want to be such an asshole?". Other than that I had very little idea of who Charles Bukowski might be.
Post Office is one of those books that is probably best read without any preconceived ideas of what it is like. I greatly enjoyed it because it seemed short and non-threatening, a run-of-the-mill post-modern novel with aggressive punctuation and capitalization, an unlikeable main character and an existential crisis. But Bukowski turned out to be the real thing. Post Office is both heartbraking and hilarious, uncomplicated and intricate and it comes at you from many different angles in its relatively short 150 pages.
Initially, I was hoping to write a more in-depth analysis of everything that's going on in Post Office, but once again I'm lacking free time. I had a hard time deciphering whether the tone of the novel reveals the writers true thoughts or if even that is just another piece of his tongue-in-cheek humor. What am I to think of the main character: an uncomely drunk who gets lucky with the ladies and wins bets at horse races, but never manages to find decent work or a place in life. Is Henry Chinaski miserable because Bukowski himself was miserable?