Factotum - Charles Bukowski

1975; 205 pages. Genre : Autobiographical Fiction. Overall Rating : "C-".

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Lifestory-wise, Factotum follows Ham On Rye. Henry "Hank" Chinaski (Bukowski's alter ego) has just moved out of his parents' house and away from L.A. The book opens with him arriving in New Orleans. For the rest of the book, Chinaski moves from city-to-city; from low-paying job-to-job; and from one drunken bender to the next. The story is set during World War 2, with Chinaski having been deferred from the armed service.

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What's To Like...

Factotum is a quick read, without any complexity to slow you down. If you want to find out what living on Skid Row feels like, this is the book for you. If you want to feel good about your present employment, the various crappy jobs that Chinaski works at (albeit briefly each time) will make yours look much better.

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The problem with Factotum is there's no progress. Chinaski's life consists of booze, cigarettes, look for a job, booze, sex, cigarettes, get hired, booze, cigarettes, booze, sex, get fired, booze, move to another city. Then start the cycle all over again. Halfway through, you can throw "play the horses" sporadically into the above routine. Repeat the whole process about eight times, and you're done.

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There's also a bit of TMI. There's not enough money for both toilet paper and booze, so guess which one isn't bought? NBD, one can always use the newspaper as TP. Except that it doesn't do as efficient of a job as the real stuff. Or so writes Bukowski. I'll take his word for it.

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It's hard to tell how much is fiction and how much is simply me being naive about the dregs of society. Chinaski only has one pick-up line, and that's, "Hey, baby. How 'bout lifting your skirt?" But it seems to get good results. Hmmm. Is that wishful fantasy, or is that how one really establishes social relations on Skid Row?

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Kewl New Words...

Factotum : a servant employed to do a variety of jobs. (fits Chinaski to a tee). 86'd : To be refused service. (previously, I only knew it as meaning "to be killed").

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Excerpts...

That was all a man needed : hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man. I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach." (pg. 63)

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National Bakery Goods was located nearby. They gave me a white smock and a locker. They made cookies, biscuits, cupcakes and so forth. Because I had claimed two years of college on my application, I got the job as Coconut Man. The Coconut Man stood up on a perch, scooped his shovel into the shredded coconut barrel and dumped the white flakes into a machine. (pg. 189-90)

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Even though it follows Ham On Rye story-wise, Bukowski wrote Factotum seven years before he penned HOR. The style is similar - blunt and gritty - but HOR is much more interesting. Maybe it's because HOR is about Chinaski's development as a youth. Or maybe Bukowski in 1982 was just a more accomplished writer than he was in 1975.

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My son had clued me in that reading Bukowski was a hit-or-miss affair. After two "hits" - see the reviews here and here, this one was a "miss" for me. There is some earthy humor, and some insightful musing, but not enough of either. My next Buko book will undoubtedly be either some of his poems or his short stories, but not another part of his 5-volume autobiography.