Factotum

Read from Friday, May 27th to Tuesday, May 31st.

Factotum, by Charles Bukowski.  The final Bukowski book that I own, although I will probably buy more.  I'm especially interested in checking out some of his poetry collections.  Once again, we follow the story of Henry Chinaski, around the end of WWII when he was still young and an unknown writer.  Chinaski drifts around the country from job to job, from woman to woman, from drink to drink.

There is not a traditional plot structure, and not much growth, and no real climax.  But these stories are centered around his many different jobs, and the things he does to get them, and his inane actions to lose them.  He works in factories, as a shipping clerk, as a receiving clerk, as a stockboy, as a janitor.  He tries to be a taxi driver, but has a drunk driving arrest.  He sends stories to different magazines, but mostly they are rejected.  He lives with a woman named Jan for awhile, and they have crazy sex, drink lots of wine, and she supports his job search.  Although when he starts winning money at the horse races, she loses interest, apparently only interested in Chinaski while he is a deadbeat.  Chinaski is also involved briefly with a woman named Laura, who, along with two other women, are essentially live in prostitutes for an old rich man.  Chinaski is hired by this man to write lyrics for his opera, although mostly he just drinks and has sex with the women on the yacht, until the old man has a heart attack and dies.

Chinaski is a pathetic man, but he offers very lucid statements on the hopelessness of the American workplace.  Workers are expected to get up very early in order to slave away, making money for a man, and they are expected to act grateful for the opportunity to be able to do this.  Chinaski always goes into a job expecting and waiting to be fired, so he slacks off and has an easy-going personality, that many mistake for confidence.  He goes to bars while working, slips off early to go to the racetrack, has sex with women in the office, sleeps in bathrooms while an overnight janitor, and other deplorable acts.  However, he has the reader's sympathy.  It ends pathetically, with him unable to get a job picking tomatoes on a farm with other bums, and instead going to watch a stripper, unable to even get it up.  Three and a half out of four stars.