Factotum by Charles Bukowski

Like Andrew Holleran, Charles Bukowski writes novels that are fictionalized memoirs. I read Post Office, his first novel, from 1971, a few months ago. This is his second novel, from 1975, but the biographical story comes before Post Office chronologically. Post Office takes place in the 1960s. Factotum covers the decade and a half prior, Bukowski’s life following the end of World War II.

Factotum is a long list of all the dead end jobs Bukowksi takes up and leaves before he gets to the job at the post office, which he also leaves, finally, to become the writer he wants to be. Every job is menial and meaningless. He slacks off. He drinks. He lives somewhere cheap. He lies. He screws when he can. He drinks some more.

It starts in New Orleans. He (Bukowski but using the name of his alter-ego, Henry Chinaski) works in a publishing distribution office. He quits that job and works as an editing assistant. He loses that job and goes back to Los Angeles, where he’s from. He moves in with his parents, gets arrested for public drunkenness and his parents throw him out.

He gets a job in an auto parts store, saves some money, quits for New York City. He gets a job as a painter for the subway. Then a job at a dog biscuit factory. He moves on to Philadelphia. He cleans a bar.

Next, St. Louis and a job as a shipping clerk in a ladies’ dresswear shop. There’s some nice stuff here where he actually writes some short stories and gets one accepted by a magazine. He gets an acceptance letter for one of his stories on page 64 and you think his life and the novel is going to change. But it doesn’t. He’s right back to yeoman work. There’s very little writing about being a writer in this novel.

Then he’s back in Los Angeles. He meets a woman named Laura who is friends with a wealthy man named Wilbur. (The same woman appears as “Betty” in Post Office.) Laura, and two other girls: Jerry and Grace, sponge off of Wilbur. Wilbur wants Henry to write the libretto for an opera he’s working on called “The Emperor of San Francisco.” Henry says he will, but he doesn’t Henry joins the girls for a day on Wilbur’s boat. The episode lasts only a few days before Wilbur dies from drinking.

Next there’s a job at a bicycle shop and a woman named Carmen. Then a long relationship with a woman named Jan. Henry loses his job and he and Jan start betting the horses. He gets another job at another auto parts store, but cuts out early to get to the race track where he’s on a winning streak. He loses that job, too but keeps the gambling.

Then there’s a chapter printed in italics, perhaps indicating that this chapter is entirely fiction? Like Post Office, this novel consists of very short chapters. This is chapter 51. He’s at the race track with Jan. A man sits in their seats and they get into an argument. Henry picks the guy up by the shirt collar and then pushes him down through the bleachers so he’s hanging underneath. Then Henry lifts his hands and the guy falls, apparently to his death. Jan and Henry cut out. Then the chapter is over and it goes back to regular type. They’re so drunk they can’t quite remember if it really happened, but Henry decides to get out of town.

Miami is next. A job in a clothing factory. He steals a pair of pants. He comes back to L.A. He hooks up with Jan again, and gets a job at a lighting store. He tries for a job as a writer at the Times, and they hire him, but as a night janitor. He loses that job, too, for sleeping on the job. He gets a job at a place that makes brake shoes. And loses it. He tries for a job with a cab company but he lies about never being arrested for drunkenness and when they find out, they fire him. Then he works in an art supply store. He gets fired for making out with a co-worker. He works for a company that makes Christmas-season items. Then a fluorescent light fixture house. Then National Bakery Goods. Then the loading dock of a hotel (called the Sans but it’s “directly across from the park downtown” so it must be the Biltmore).

Finally he’s on skid row looking for jobs as a day laborer. He loses out on a job picking tomatoes in Bakersfield because he lets a Mexican woman get on the truck in front of him and she’s the last one they hire. He tries another day labor agency but gets drunk with another guy and the agency won’t hire him. The novel ends with him walking into a strip show on Main Street. It’s the theater right down the block from my apartment, now a music club called The Regent. He watches a woman named Darlene. She strips naked, but he’s so drunk the last line of the novel is, “And I couldn’t get it up.”

It’s a short novel about a long line of failures. The guy’s a loser. A drunk. A womanizer. But the novel itself, as a piece of story-telling, as a written object, is pretty great. And you know that the main character, Henry Chinaski, is the author, Charles Bukowski, so a guy you otherwise wouldn’t care too much about, you do care about. My only complaint is that there’s so little about Henry as a writer. He doesn’t actual write. He doesn’t think about writing. He doesn’t read. Of course stories about writing aren’t nearly as interesting as stories about getting drunk and having sex. Not much happens when a writer is actually writing. Who cares about the sufferings of writers sitting at typewriters and trying to get published? But nobody would care at all about Henry Chinaski if Henry Chinaski weren’t Charles Bukowski. Henry’s story, in this novel, ends with him drunk, unemployed, and impotent. But Bukowski’s story ends with a series of pretty great novels and multiple volumes of poetry.

I have to mention, amid all the heterosexual stuff, that there are a couple of homosexual encounters in Factotum. Henry doesn’t participate, but he gets propositioned. Chapter 77 is about a guy named Paul at the art supply store. Paul is described as 28, and fat, and a taker of pills. “He showed me a handful. They were all different sizes and colors” (page 176). Paul has a girlfriend, but he also has a reducing machine that giggles and he likes to fuck on top of it. He tells Henry, “You and I can use that machine” and Henry asks, “Who gets on top?” Paul answers, “What difference does it make? I can take it or give it. Top or bottom, it doesn’t matter.” Henry declines, saying, “I can’t do it, Paul. I’m straight.” And he declines the pills, too, although he does go over to Paul’s apartment. But I was surprised at the language of “top” and “bottom”. When I was in my teens in the 70s I learned the words “active” and “passive” for the two positions guys could take in sex. I always thought top and bottom were newer terms, but here they were in a novel from 1975 relating an episode from the 50s! I wonder when those words actually came into use?

Anyway, I like Henry’s (Bukowski’s) matter-or-fact attitude. He’s propositioned again at the skid row labor agency. A guy asks, “How’d you like a blow job?” and Henry answers, “No, I don’t think so.” and then when the guy pushes, Henry says “Listen, I’m sorry, I’m not in the mood.” (p. 197). Not an angry rejection. Or disgust. But an apology. And not, “how dare you!” but “I’m not in the mood.”

But, of course, by this point Henry’s too drunk to get it up, anyway.