User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
people like talking shit about charles bukowski on goodreads, it seems funny.
i liked this book a lot. henry chinaski is an asshole but he knows he's an asshole and simply accepts being an asshole. everything seems detached and transient, nothing really matters to him, life is just this "thing that is happening" which he feels powerless to, so he doesn't invest much emotion in the things he feels like he needs to do to stay alive, and drinks to avoid feelings of alienation. i laughed out loud several times, alone.
this is the first bukowski novel i've read. i understand how people could claim that he's misogynistic, but it seems more to me like he is someone who is extremely detached from people in general, but also enjoys the experience of sex. when he talks about women in an "overly sexualized" way, they are usually women he doesn't know. in my experience, i usually objectify/have enhanced biases towards strangers of any kind -- or like, when i see a man i don't know who i'm intensely attracted to, i usually focus strongly on his physical characteristics because it's impossible to do anything else without knowing someone. bukowski seems to objectify women in a way that is not offensive, it just strikes me as what people who don't interact with a lot of people do, because people are always at a distance. he objectifies everything, kind of.
i empathized with him a lot. if he were alive and someone it made sense for me to know, i would probably have intense feelings for him and we would have sex but he wouldn't be able to fall in love with me because he was too self-involved/depressed, or he'd see that i care too much or something. still, reading this made me feel less alone.
i recommend this book to people who are depressed, introverted, maybe have had problems with alcohol, disenchanted with people/society in general, don't like lengthy descriptions/cliches/"language masturbation," and are able to view life with a detached, sarcastic eye.
Rating: really liked it
There were times while reading this short novel that I had to stop and wonder if my aspiration to one day be the female Bukowski is either setting my sights too high or placing the bar too low.
And then I up and went to a bar, since I was reading this on the anniversary of the Dirtiest Old Man in Literature's passing and all, so I stopped worrying about pretty much everything. YOU'RE STILL MY BOY, BUK.
Rating: really liked it
Factotum, Charles BukowskiFactotum (1975) is the second novel by German born American author Charles Bukowski.
Set in the 1940's, the plot follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's perpetually unemployed, alcoholic alter ego, who has been rejected from the World War II draft and makes his way from one menial job to the next (hence a factotum).
Chinaski drifts through the seedy city streets of lower-class Los Angeles in search of a job that will not come between him and his first love: writing.
He is consistently rejected by the only publishing house he respects, but is driven to continue by the knowledge that he could do better than the authors they publish.
Chinaski begins sleeping with fellow barfly Jan, a kindred spirit he meets while drowning his sorrows at a bar.
When a brief stint as a bookie finds him abandoned by the only woman with whom he is able to relate, a fling with gold-digging floozy Laura finds him once again falling into a morose state of perpetual drunkenness and unemployment.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز هفتم ماه دسامبر سال دوهزاروهجده میلادی
عنوان هزار پیشه؛ نویسنده چارلز بوکوفسکی؛ مترجم نیلوفر داد؛ ویراستار بابک حقایق؛ تهران، قاصدک صبا، یکهزاروسیصدونودوشش هجری؛ در یکصد هفتاد و هشت صفحه؛ شابک9786005675306؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان آلمانی تبار ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: هزار پیشه؛ نویسنده: چارلز بوکوفسکی؛ مترجم: علی امیرریاحی؛ ویراستار سعید خواجه افضلی؛ تهران، نگاه، 1396؛ در199ص؛
شابک9786003762398؛
قهرمانِ داستانِ هزارپیشه، جوانی است به نام «هنری چیناسکی» است، که دوستانش او را «هَنک (خودمانی «هنری») صدا میزنند، همانندِ خودِ «بوکوفسکی» که همه او را به این نام میشناختند؛ در واقع او هم همانندِ نویسنده، یک آمریکاییِ «لهستانی» تبار است؛ «هنک» از خدمت نظام وظیفه معاف شده، و حتی اگر هم معاف نمیشد، بعید بود در جنگ شرکت کند؛ داستان در سالهایِ آخرِ جنگِ دومِ جهانی، و نیز دوره ی پس از جنگ میگذرد، یعنی زمانیکه همه ی همسن و سالهایِ او،در جبهه های اروپا، آفریقا، و خاورِ دور، هستند؛ اما «چیناسکی» علاقه ای به آن کارها ندارد؛ او اشتغال به هر کارِ پَستِ دیگری را، به جان و دل میپذیرد، و اوقاتِ فراغتش را، صرفِ نوشخواری، و زنبارگی، و ولگردی، میکند؛ به روزنامه ی «لُسآنجلس تایمز» میرود، تا برای شغلِ روزنامه نگاری درخواستِ کار کند، اما وقتی از اداره ی کارگزینیِ روزنامه، به او خبر میدهند، که تنها برای شغلِ نظافتچی میتوانند، استخدامش کنند، این شغل را رد نمیکند.؛ دوست دارد، حتی موقعِ عشقبازی به موسیقیِ کلاسیک گوش بدهد؛ این دوره ی بحرانیِ سالهایِ جنگ، و دوره ی بلافاصله پس از آن، باعثِ آن شده است، که او کمترین توجهی به راه و رسمِ رایجِ «زندگیِ آمریکایی» نشان ندهد؛ تنها چیزی که موردِ علاقه ی «چیناسکی» است، و او به طور جدی به آن میپردازد، نوشتنِ داستانهایِ کوتاهی است که با دست پاکنویس میکند، چون ماشین تحریر ندارد، و برای مجله هایِ مهمِ ادبی میفرستد؛
او میخواهد نویسنده بشود، و به عنوانِ نویسنده شناخته شود؛ در زندگیِ کولی واری که در پیش گرفته است (و ظاهراً هیچ آخر و عاقبتِ خوشی برایِ آن نمیتوان تصور کرد) هیچ چیزِ دیگری برایِ او مهم نیست.؛ او منتظر است؛ منتظرِ اینکه جامعه ی ادبی او را کشف کند؛ این تنها چیزی است که خواب و خوراک از او بریده است؛ و این در حقیقت، شمه ای از زندگینامۀ خودِ «بوکوفسکی» است؛ در واقع اُلگوی قهرمانِ این داستان، و دیگر رمانهایِ «بوکوفسکی»، خودِ اوست؛
قلم بوکوفسکی همیشه جذاب است؛ ایشان ساده و کوتاه مینویسند؛ دیالوگهای طولانی در آثارش وجود ندارد؛ کلمات پیچیده استفاده نمیکند؛ به دنبال این نیست که خوانشگر را تحت تاثیر قرار دهد؛ ترسی از به کار بردن واژه های محاوره ای و کوچه بازاری ندارد؛ زشت است ولی این زشتی را به زیبایی نشان میدهد؛ موضوعات مهمی که دیگران به آن باور دارند، و برای آن حاضرند جان خود را فدا کنند، به سخره، و زندگی را آسانتر از هر فرد دیگری، میگیرد؛ از بیهودگی فرار نمیکند، و زندگی را به طرزی جذاب مسخره نشان میدهد و…؛ در عین حال «بوکوفسکی» در آثارش خوانشگر را به چالش میکشد، که فکری به حال خودش بکند؛ چون اگر این کار را نکند، غرقِ دنیای بیهودگی میشود؛
برای این نقطه ها را با نقطهویرگول یا سمیکالون جایگزین میکنم که هر روز برادران با یاری نرم افزارهای چین متنهای فارسی نگاشته شده را به هم میریزند، تا برای دیگران قابل خوانش نباشد، آداب و ادب کشورمان را خود به دست جوانان خود ویران میکنیم
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
[Revised 6/19/22]
A Jack Kerouac-type story of bumming across the country. But Hank Chinaski, our main character, started in LA and went east while Jack started east and went west. Jack would be a fun guy to have a beer with. And so would Hank except that with Hank, at the end of the night, you’d have to call a cab, dump him in the back set and give the cabbie his address, (to some run-down boarding house with bedbugs). Somehow next morning you’d still end up posting bail for him.
The author lived the life of his character, at least for ten years when he was a raving alcoholic. Bukowski wrote many novels but was better known as a poet in his lifetime (1920-1994). Someone called the author the “Poet Laureate of Lowlife.”
In the book, Hank is a full-blown alcoholic, working a job now and then to get enough money for his next binge. He loves to travel cross-country by bus and train, his suitcase filled with pints of whisky. (Although published in 1975, the story is set in the 1940s just after WW II.) In the book he starts out in New Orleans and travels to LA, then Philly and St. Louis, LA again, Miami and back to LA.
His parents are in LA. When he comes home, drunk of course, there are tears, screaming, slappings from his mother, and fist fights with his father. Living at home is “not an option.”
He’s constantly hitting on women in low-life bars and has a high success ratio – they are almost always prostitutes. So we have some graphic sex, and a bit about bodily functions, that strike me as almost ‘in celebration' of the fact that it is 1975 and you could write stuff like that now and still get published. Of course he’s a misogynist and we have the occasional inappropriate remarks about Jews, Blacks Hispanics and gays. When he cleans up his hotel room he thinks “I must be turning fag.” But as drinking buddies, Hank loves everyone until he decides to slap a woman or punch a guy out.
A lot of the story is about the low-level jobs he worked. Hank is an aspiring writer who sends stories out weekly and occasionally has one published for $50. This is the only novel I’ve read that gives you an accurate idea of what it’s like to work jobs like these because I did too, and Bukowski tells it like it is. As a kid in high school and college I worked part-time evenings and full-time summers in three grocery stores (meat, produce and stocking shelves), clean-up boy in Woolworths, boxing hot-dog buns in an automated bakery, a hardware warehouse unloading trucks, taxi driver, a soda-canning plant, and two plastics factories (including the Titleist golf-ball factory!) and as a salesclerk in Western Auto (anyone remember those?).
I liked the story and it’s an easy read with straight-forward writing. I’m glad I read something by a new author previously unknown to me. Since then Ive also read and enjoyed his novel Post Office.
The author's grave in Los Angeles from, wikipedia
Workers in a Texas onion warehouse in the 1950s from texashistoryarchives.com
The author from amazon.com
Rating: really liked it
Factotum – an employee who does all kinds of work.
Henry Chinaski – an alter ego of
Charles Bukowski – was a special kind of factotum – he was an employee who didn’t want to do any kind of work.
“I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.”
“Oh, a writer, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not.”
“What do you write?”
“Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.”
“A novel, eh?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the name of it?”
“‘The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.’”
“Oh, I like that. What’s it about?”
“Everything.”
“Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?”
“Yes.”
“How about my wife?”
“She’s in there too.”
“You don’t say. Why do you want to work in a ladies’ dress shop?”
“I’ve always liked ladies in ladies’ dresses.”
Dull jobs in the dull world: he didn’t care about anything. He wanted to be a writer. And he kept writing all the time and anywhere.
I drank for some time, three or four days. I couldn’t get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.
He honestly told the world what kind of the man he was and what kind of the world he lived in and in spite of anything he became a writer… one of the most uncompromising writers.
Rating: really liked it
fac·to·tum
/fakˈtōdəm/
noun
An employee who does all kinds of work.
Welcome Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's ever sarcastic, cynical, alcoholic and perpetually unemployed alter-ego. It's the 1940s, Chinaski had been rejected by the World War II drafts on account of his mental health, and he's searching for a job. A job that would serve him nicely and won't come in between him and his true love: writing.
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
Chinaski works one menial job after another and gets thrown out of most, except the ones he leaves on his own (hence, factotum). He constantly writes short-stories to Clay Gladmore, whose New York magazine "Frontfire" he admired. As it happens, all of them come back with a rejection slip.
“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.” As with most Chinaski stories, we end up finding love over drinks at a bar....
"Baby,” I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.”
She looked down at me. “Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink. "
....or over a hamburger and beer....
"She was strange; she was always hot in the morning with her hangovers. I was not so hot in the mornings with mine. I was a night man. But at night she was always screaming and throwing things at me: telephones, telephone books, bottles, glasses (full and empty), radios, purses, guitars, ashtrays, dictionaries, broken watch bands, alarm clocks…She was an unusual woman."
....only to lose it all.
“I hate it when he fucks me,” Jan had said. She was now probably saying the same thing about me to him.
In the end, we just get a full-on Bukowski moment at a strip-joint, as we prepare to go out in a blaze of unemployed, poverty-stricken, alcoholic frenzy, but....
"And I couldn’t get it up."
Loved this book, from start to finish.
Rating: really liked it
I have a sort of pre-emptive dislike-verging-on-loathing of Bukowski, which I think is rooted in my post-adolescent rejection of and disillusionment with the Beat writers (whom I absolutely adored in high school). I’ve never read Bukowski before, but I’ve seen
Barfly and
Factotum on the screen. I’ve seen two documentaries about him which likewise left me more disgusted and depressed than anything. This is where I’m coming from. There’s also this song that aided in informing me about the man.
One of my poet friends in high school once told me that he only would read Bukowski while taking a shit. This has stuck with me over the years. Once, a girl I became involved with praised Bukowski while simultaneously giving me a caveat about what a terrible sexist he was. This is where I’m coming from.
I started reading this one on the shitter after a long day’s work. Then I moved to the couch where I drank alcohol and chain-smoked cigarettes while zooming through the book. I sneered at the blunt simplicity of the sentences at first, feeling the intense distance between this kind of writing and the George Saunder’s stories I’d been reading recently, as well as the generally more stylistically interesting and intellectually potent books I tend to gravitate towards. But I still felt entertained by this stuff, nonetheless. As more Tesco brand scotch intersected with my veins, I began to see slightly more nuance to this rather thematically repetitive first-person, clearly auto-bio stuff that Bukowski had written about a drunk-as-shit-nihilist/struggling writer who clearly is himself. Very little imagination seemed to be at work here. Just the spilt guts of a self-aggrandizing louse. But yet, I continued to be entertained, so I pressed on, feeling each sentence flow by without much effort on my part. Following the narrative of being employed many, many times, failing and getting fired just as many, drinking, drinking, drinking (to a sickening degree), and barnacle-ing to the hulls of a series of horrendously-depicted females. That’s about all there is to this novel. Working, Drinking, Fucking. Rinse, repeat.
“Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.”
But amidst the misspelled words (“he lighted his cigarette”) and dumb-assed factual errors (the USA fighting China in WWII) I gradually found some remarkably “human” moments speckled within the details. There’s a potent dissatisfaction with the exploitative nature of American Capitalism to be found within the job-after-fucking-job experiences the narrator tumbles through. There’s something weirdly edifying in witnessing the details of a severe drunk’s day-to-day physical ailments and triumphs and tribulations, even when nauseating, like most of them are. Even the contemptible attitudes displayed toward women have an oddly true ring to them. This is NOT to say that I agree with treating women like shit the way Bukowski clearly does, but that his shittiness is a stark reminder of certain horrible realities that do certainly exist in the minds of many men. And this I found interesting, in an historico-anthropological sort of way, while simultaneously depressing and upsetting.
And then I thought of Raymond Carver. He also was once a real-life drunk of epic proportions who wrote in tight, blunt, staccato, matter-of-fact sentence-lumps, consistently describing soul-crushing work-weeks, oceans of booze and cluttered ashtrays. Why do I like his writing so much and yet feel this strong, largely pre-emptive aversion to Bukowski? That’s the question. Carver's prose-style is really no more innovative or poetic than Chuck’s, but yet when I read two of Carver’s collections I encountered them with such a different attitude and happy reception. Carver, for one, doesn’t denigrate women the way Bukowski does. That’s one thing. And while he speaks of little else beyond sad, failed, alcoholic people, he manages to make it seem far less
about him--the almighty, misanthropic author--and more about said sad, failed, alcoholic people. There’s an extremely off-putting narcissism to Bukowski, so far as I can tell from reading a single book of his, which Carver elegantly transcends, despite similar style and content.
But then I wonder, is there more buried deep within the the wine-soaked walls of Bukowski than lets on immediately? Or, do I perhaps harbor some of the same misanthropy that he nakedly exposes one word to the next? Am I really any better? Well, my answer to the first query is still "NO" and my response to the second still "YES" but contemplating these things during my read was enriching in some way, so I reluctantly give some credit there to ol' CB.
But what was Bukowski, really? A terminally depressed, ego-maniac/self-hater with a bottle permanently pressed to his lips. Some part of me can resonate with this, as much as I high-falutin-ly know that this is the case. There’s a dark knot of nihilism stuck inside my heart, I know this. Perhaps reading these rather bleak and repetitive exploits of Bukowski’s tingles some part of that in me that seeks connection and recognition. I do not know for sure.
Rating: really liked it
I love this poem about the drunken Charles Bukowski, written by Raymond Carver, depicting (fictional?) Buk speaking to a bunch of creative writing students, in “You Don’t Know What Love Is”:
https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/you...
A “factotum” describes someone who does a range of "low-level" (meaning low-paid) work. This short novel I listened to, which makes it a bit like a guy telling you his life story while drinking you under the table (oh, he always could, and even now, years gone, could probably still do it). I was driving while listening to it, and not drinking as I was driving, for your information, thanks. The story is really a prequel to Ham and Rye, which was about the early years of Henry Chinaski, Bukowksi’s mostly (I am told) autobiographical main character. If Ham on Rye is about Chinaski's lost youth, Buk's second one features Chinaski's lost twenties about booze, terrible jobs, women, and drunken brawls. Because of the title, there might be a greater focus here on all the soul-killing, mind-numbing jobs he worked to pay for flophouse rent and booze, almost all of them from which he was fired, sometimes after only a day.
In one job, he got paid by a bar owner 5 bucks and all the shots of whiskey he could drink to clean a total of six window blinds, which as it turns out took him all day, and in the end required—because he was of course drunk—the help of all his fellow bar patrons, for whom he used the five bucks to buy a round (this was the fifties, when five bucks could actually almost buy a bar full of patrons a round; well, almost. In the end he had to put $8.50 on the tab he owed the bartender).
Bukowski also worked at Sears FIVE different times during this period, fired each time for stealing and various other infractions. Usually for not showing up for work while he was on a three-day bender with some girl, or healing from some fight. Hey, I worked at Sears, in the stockroom, for a year or so! Boring job, in which I hid out and read books during long evening shifts. Did I ever sneak in a bottle of wine for me and my fellow misery-suffering-warehouse rats? I seem to recall I may have done this once or twice, but you ain't a priest, and this ain't no confessional booth.
Factotum doesn’t quite have the innocence of Ham and Rye, when he actually just lusted after various girls and women, when he was just a kid. In this book he actually has a lot of sex, some of it funny, all of it described in gloriously vulgar detail, though finally, as with the jobs, it’s really mostly misery, all the time. He’s going nowhere fast. And it feels like the well-told raucous romp of a million alcoholics. And a guy who is during this time often an unapologetic asshole. I think you could ask any of the women he was “with” during this period for their view of him and it would not be positive (though when they were drinking with him, at least, I am sure they had fun).
But can I turn away and stop listening? Nope. Bukowski will be hilarious for some, and too offensive for many, but he sure can tell a story. The poverty and squalor of Factotum is not quite as fun as it was in Ham and Rye, but at his best, Bukowski is worth the offense, imho:
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
Who in working class America cannot raise a glass to that? In the end, Bukowski reveals himself in all his assholism to be in the company of other great and painful stories of the ravages of booze, such as Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, or any Kerouac, or Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Bukowski almost convinces you that the pursuit of drunkenness as a way of coping with reality is a kind of spiritual pursuit:
“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
Factotum is not for everyone, I warn you, or welcome you, depending on your love of the tales of the down and out.
Rating: really liked it
When the undercurrent of life starts to pull you away even struggling against it can take you further away...this book is the perfect example of this. Over the years I have really come to appreciate the raw honesty of Bukowski - his work was always true to who he was. Sometimes I go to the used bookstore by my house just to see if any of his works are there.
Rating: really liked it
Site-seeing on a BudgetThe human body comes equipped with any number of genetic and acquired defects. Yet it is very difficult to kill. This seems to be the principal message of most of Bukowski’s work. To the extent his protagonist, Hank Chinaski, is biographical, one can only marvel at his ability to survive such largely self-inflicted misery and his refrainment from self-immolation.
“The desire to find a job did not seem to be with me,” Chinaski says after enduring several weeks of virtual starvation and sleeping on park benches, and just prior to decking his nagging father. Chinaski is a mystical bum who depends a great deal on the spirit to move him to anything more challenging than a glass of beer. To suggest Chinaski is hapless might imply that he cares about his fate. He doesn’t. His aimless wandering is his purpose.
New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Miami, and just about everywhere in between. It’s not clear why Chinaski travels; all the sleazy rooming houses and the low-life bars are the same. The jobs in each are different but their commonality is that no one else will do them. Besides, he is always alone in any case:
“I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it.”Miraculously, it seems, Chinaski finds the strength and the time between drinks to write his short stories - four or five a week. Dedicated to his art, when he isn’t falling off a barstool. The one thing he does have is a sort of vengeful hope that he can make it as a writer. The only thing he has to write about aside from the booze is random sex. It sells of course. Anyone who can have that much sex after that much alcohol has something important to say.
There is a certain seedy courtliness in Chinaski’s encounters. After one particularly vigorous session, for example, he can give credit when credit is due:
“for a woman with only one ovary she responded generously.” And he is aware of gentlemanly obligations:
“A woman is a full-time job. You have to choose your profession.” If you’re a writer, this rules out anything serious. And it doesn’t inhibit the occasional punch out either. Chinaski is an abuser, even when he’s not drunk.
But the booze always wins, over and over again. The repetition is convincing but tedious. Going nowhere fast is a tough story to tell. Petty pilfering, collegial tiffs, office sex and descriptions of a variety of failing businesses don’t really sustain readerly interest.
Rating: really liked it
Every so often, maybe one in every 200 hundred books, there will be a passage that just speaks to you. It may be just a sentence or a few words or it may be something much larger. But either way, such words have the power to profoundly affect your life.
There is a before and an after. A time where you didn't read them and a time in which you have. And you can mark the progress of your life through such experiences.
And, for me, it's been a long time in which I have read words that have moved me to action so.
I will leave them here:
“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start." 
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Rating: really liked it
"What kind of job you looking for?"
"Stockboy, shipping clerk, janitor."
The denizens of Bukowski's fictional world encompass the marginalized chaff of mid-20thcentury America. Barely a step ahead of abject vagrancy, Bukowski's protagonist and alter-ego Henry Chinaski is the everyman of our species comfortable asking the bare minimum of this world.
When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.Chinaski's story isn't pretty, but Bukowski isn't concerned about offending a reader's middle-class American sensibilities. If the reader comes to this text with our typical baggage: work issues, money problems, familial strife - Chinaski's search for his next drink and fuck can be jarring. It's a credit to Bukowski's genius that he can make a character and not a caricature.
How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
Rating: really liked it
Having read two of Bukowski's books now, I've decided he's for two types of people: psuedo-intelectual masochists that want to slum a little and more genuine people that live very histrionic if arrogant and introverted lives. I can’t get over how conceited Bukowski is, how conceited his books and intentions are, or the way he treats his audience. I guess he’s sort of a modern day Oscar Wilde or Elephant Man, but reading his books gives me the impression that most people that read him think the jokes on the other readers, that the jokes not on them, that they’re “with it.” That’s a little too much macho bullshit headgames for me. I like his honesty and he’s usually a quick read, though often repetitive and some of his more ludicrous fantasy escapades are off putting. Usually I don’t like books by writers about writing, but he usually handles it well (when does he have time to write?). Knowing some Joes like him, I wish they took their minds of the bottle and did something productive like write it all down. I’ll read some more of him, but I usually like my machismo with a little more humility, like John Wayne (that’s a joke).
Rating: really liked it
Great as always, you gotta love him!
Rating: really liked it
"These people are assholes, assholes! They have no intelligence! They don't know how to think! They're afraid of the mind! They're sick! They're cowards! They aren't thinking men like you and me" A writer who
struggles to make ends meet so he takes every job he can possibly find. Bukowski's writing is sharp, brutal, raw. The story at some parts I could even describe it as depressing.. (lost count of how many jobs he changed or how many females he slept with) For me Factotum is brilliant.
Having read Ask the dust it's obvious what effect Fante had on Bukowski. I found so many similarities, but I still like Factotum more.
I am so glad that I read it again because there were so many quotes I've missed when I first read it.
People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be Factotum I guess it's
not a book for everyone, but those who dare to read it will find some things to like about it.
