Introducing today: spoiler tags! Some passages will be have not-so-random black bars in them. If you don't want the contents of the book spoiled, skip 'em. If you want to know what I'm talking about, highlight them with your mouse.
Quote Porn
Post Office
"They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn't say anything. That was their little game. It didn't interest me. I wasn't much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing."
"There was something about funerals. It made you see things better. A funeral a day and I'd be rich."
Childhood's End
"He sometimes wondered if it was a good thing for any man to work at such an altitude above his fellow humans. Detachment was all very well, but it could change so easily to indifference."
"A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom."
" 'I've invented a new definition for TV', he muttered gloomily. 'I've decided it's a device for hindering communication between artist and audience.' "
A Few Thoughts
A couple early works from a couple big 20th century authors. Post Office was Bukowski's first published book, coming when he was 50 years young and had a lifetime of cynicism and wit to draw on. Childhood's End was Clarke's third, long before any of his better known work in the sixties and seventies.
I'd been searching for an excuse to read some Arthur C. Clarke for some time; I'm a large fan of Asimov and the two are always mentioned in the same breath, but I'd never really found a reason and there was always something else I wanted to read. Then, I noticed that Childhood's End shared a name with a Marillion song I'm particularly fond of, and even if they didn't have anything to do with each other (they don't), it was a foot in the door.
Clarke's most phenomenal contribution to science fiction, to me, is just how lucid his vision of the future was. Some of the things he describes in this book weren't invented for decades, but he's spot on with how technology drives the world to evolve, and as such, his work has aged better than a lot of science fiction. I had to remind myself a few times that the book is older than my old man. Par exemple: Clarke talks about the Cold War's Space Race four years before Sputnik I.
The intro's a brilliant way to introduce the story, and it's a solid one with some neat twists and reveals (Karellen's reveal especially). Until the ending, the book did a great job with suspension of disbelief for me. The eventual fate of our planet & its last inhabitant is definitely sad and thought-provoking. That said, the mechanism that evokes these thoughts is where the narrative side of things kind of lost me, and I do my best to forget the ending—keep in mind that this is the same mind that brought us the cockamamie conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Maybe that's an indicator that I'm not a true sci-fi fan. Who knows.
What I loved about Post Office was sort of noted by Chuck Klosterman in a recent article about Seinfeld: like the famous four from New York, Bukowski presents himself as the self-serving megalomaniac that he is (and always has been) instead of projecting some ideal self to the world. He—sorry, I mean Henry Chianski—spent his life doing menial work for the US postal service, and while he didn't enter the service as any kind of saint, he left as bitter as ever. This bitterness resonated with me and made me laugh a lot.
Other than God's final message to the universe at the end of So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, I don't know if I've ever read a comedy that managed a good and surprising ending. There's no plot twist, mind you; it ends just about when Henry Chianski declares "Fuck the Post Office! For keeps!" and sets out to become a writer. Still, the phrasing and lead-up to the ending is perfect, and really shows off Bukowski's flair for the blunt. I still smile when I think about it. It's a book equivalent to a movie's ending scene where every conflict and story has reached its end, and the sound guy cues Fleetwood Mac playing Don't Stop as the protagonist walks down the street and smiles at and/or kicks a dog that crosses his path as he walks off into his post-chronicle future.
If I have one complaint (and I guess by virtue of writing this, I do), it's that Bukowski repeats himself a lot. The book's short, so it didn't grate on me so much, but there were still just so many instances of "I went to work with a hangover. Work sucked 'cause I was hungover. Also, my boss is a twat. So, I said/did something petty to make my world a better place." Chalk this up to the same honesty I mentioned earlier, I suppose, but I read Post Office after reading Women & Ham on Rye, and their repetitions, though still present, were more endearing to me for some reason.
Head-to-Head
Characters: The literary connection I feel to anyone other than Chianski is, successfully, the same closeness I feel with people I deal with in professional settings; that is to say, pretty much none. There are plenty of great characters in Childhood's End, but the strength and interactions of Rikki Stormgren & Karellen alone make them more than just background noise.
Advantage: Childhood's End.
Plot: While I don't mean to undermine the fact that Post Office was a very fun read, Childhood's End had a lot more going for it than "Work sucks, it's 5:00 somewhere!"
Advantage: Childhood's End.
Ending: Telepathic star children: not just in Kubrick films! Blech.
Advantage: Post Office.
Language/Writing: Bukowski is usually a quotation machine, but the frank storytelling tone in Post Office doesn't leave as much room for that as usual. Clarke doesn't try and ramble on about quasineutrinocentric flaxons like some sci-fi writers do, and his language is simple and effective for me.
Advantage: Childhood's End, by a nose.
Philosophy: The brutal meditation on the limits of human intelligence is a painful thought that's handled delicately in Childhood's End. The brutal meditation on the waste of human intelligence is a painful thought that's handled bluntly in Post Office. They're both great, but one is definitely a little more important than the other.
Advantage: Childhood's End, by a horn.
Winner Winner Turkey Supper
This one doesn't even begin to betray my Goodreads ratings: Post Office was a 3 and Childhood's End was a 5. I want to again stress that Post Office is in this tournament because it's definitely worth the quick read—but it's no match for the also-quick pageturner by Clarke.
Childhood's End moves on to round two.
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