Factotum by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Working, Drinking, & Loving in Seedy WWII-era USA Factotum (1975) is a short novel told in a series of short chapters that provide a sardonic, amusing, and morbidly fascinating look at down and out life in World War Two era American cities like New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and especially Los Angeles, as Charles Bukowski's young alter-ego Henry (Hank) Chinaski travels around by train or bus (without being able to sleep or defecate) and half-heartedly interviews for, miraculously gets, and promptly quits or is fired from a series of demeaning, “dull stupid jobs” with grotesque overseers and coworkers. A factotum is someone who does all kinds of work, and Henry is a newspaper gopher, subway poster remover and applier, auto parts store clerk, dog biscuit factory oven worker, women’s dresses shipping clerk, potential libretto writer, bakery coconut man, hotel loading dock worker, fluorescent light fixture shipping clerk, art supply store shipping clerk, LA Times janitor, potential Yellow Cab driver, and more. Typically, after several days he rubs his bosses or coworkers the wrong way for his perceived superior attitude, when it's really only that he doesn't like people (“I was a man who thrived on solitude”) or tires of whatever soul-destroying work he happens to be doing (“I was horrified by life and by what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed”) or succumbs to wanderlust (“Packing was always a good time”). All the while he is living in a series of seedy apartments, while drinking constantly and turning out scores of hand-written short stories that he sends off to literary magazines, almost going through the motions but never quite giving up the idea that he is a hitherto undiscovered “writer”--which might be part of his self-directed irony: “Baby, I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.” Because of his views on work, Henry would rather stay in bed and drink. He also does plenty of drinking away from home, of course, as once with an old friend when he wakes up in jail arrested for having caused a traffic jam without remembering any of the details. He spends as little time as possible with his weak and soft mother and his unpleasant father, who says things like, “My son is a God damn no good drunk” and “How the hell are you going to make it?” and charges him rent and clothes washing fees to stay in their home. Tellingly, he only masturbates when he's in his family home. He is not immune from considering getting a gun and putting himself out of his misery. He’s often attracted to and occasionally lucky (?) with members of the opposite sex. He listens to classical music on the radio, and the likes of Mahler and Beethoven perform the soundtrack for some funky filthy sex and debauchery and conflict. I sense a homophobic vibe, as Bukowski shows Henry turning down a couple offers of sex from creepy men and dryly remark that his sudden spate of apartment cleaning must be due to his “turning fag.” Bukowski writes memorable lines, about-- --charisma: “I always started a job with the feeling that I would soon quit or be fired and this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.” --romance: “Great lovers were always men of leisure. I fucked better as a bum than as a puncher of time clocks.” --human nature: “For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter totter.” He is a master of the vivid grotesque description, like: “The people swarmed up out of the subway, like insects, faceless, mad. They rushed upon me and into and around me with much intensity. They spun and pushed each other. They made horrible sounds.” And “I was given instruction by a toothless elf with a film over his left eye. The film was white and green with spidery blue lines.” And “The large bed was covered with stuffed animals. All of the animals looked surprised and stared at me.” The audiobook reader, Christian Baskus, is the ideal Bukowski/Chinaski, perfect. The novel ends with Henry out of work, out of love, and alone, impotently taking in a vigorous strip tease act: “I couldn't get it up.” Rather than closure, it feels like Bukowski just decided to stop his tenuously linked series of work and love anecdotes. There isn’t a clear climax and resolution to the novel so much as a petering out. Nonetheless, I can’t help it: I want to read more! View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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