SOURCE: "Mirror of Ourselves: Notes on Bukowski's Post Office," in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 5, No. 3, Fall 1985, pp. 39-42.

In the following favorable review, Glazier discusses the novel Post Office, in which he sees a cogent macrocosm of the human condition.

When Post Office, Bukowski's first published novel, came off the press in 1971, an important moment in the history of modern American literature occurred. Bukowski stood like a giant, one foot astride each of two continents: poetry and prose; pornography and belles letters; suicide and sainthood; Europe and America; the underground press and the brackish water of the literati. A truly historic first novel, Post Office was as definitive as a line drawn in the dirt.

Bukowski had stepped forward from the maelstrom of prophetic vision, having established himself securely by such visionary poetic works as Flowers, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960), Crucifix in a Deathhand (1965), and the collection...