Book Review: One of my gripes about novels, movies, television, is that no one works, or at least it's rarely portrayed. Or if characters do work, jobs are something that can be fulfilled in a few minutes a day with some flirtation and a joke or two thrown in for good measure. Not the ravening beast that consumes half our lives and fill us with the fear of being fired and unable to pay the rent. Factotum is a novel about work.
In the Charles Bukowski story arc, Factotum follows Ham on Rye (and is then followed by Post Office); that's the best order to read them, if you can. Toward the end of Ham on Rye, Chinaski is desperate to leave home, to escape his parents, but won't try to keep a job so he can afford to leave home. In one of the early scenes of Factotum, Chinaski is working for $17 a week (!), after four days he demands a raise to $19, and quits when denied. The next week he takes a job for $12/week. That is the essence of Chinaski and Factotum: to be true to himself he will never commit to a job, work hard, or deny himself anything to keep working. Even if it means borderline disaster. Traveling across the country he finds job after job (explaining them in detail), and describes how the blue-collar working world operates. He knows how to play the game, he just chooses not to play. His attitude says he will never give in to the Man, no matter how much it hurts. The other half of that equation is, Charles Bukowski believes that working life is so stacked against the worker, that for any self-respecting person, there's no point in working. The first three-quarters of the book were quite good, but seemed to run out of steam toward the end. Factotum is vintage Bukowski, there's no plot, just a series of jobs and drinking, sex, race tracks, the occasional bit of philosophy. One of Bukowski's better books. And to save you the time of checking, a "factotum" is an employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities. Appropriate title. [3.5 Stars]
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