First published in 1975, Charles Bukowski’s Factotum was his second novel. It followed the rousing success of Post Office (1971).

Set in the 1940s, it continues the deadbeat adventures of slobbish alcoholic Henry Chinaski (Bukowski’s alter-ego) as he loafs about being useless in society. This one really covers an endless series of catastrophic incompetence in various mundane jobs.

The result is a very amusing picaresque loose autobiographical novel, meaning it depicts a lovable rogue going about being a bit of a lower class loser… just in appealing, anti-hero fashion. Let’s explore it with a warm beer!

On the Foolishness of Work in Factotum

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness.”

If you’re wondering about the book’s title, factotum is a noun meaning the type of employee who does all manner of jobs. Other terms for this include:

• Jack of all trades
• Gaffer
• Dogsbody
• Knockabout
• Lackey
• Underling

Not at the level of a servant or slave, but close enough given the nature of capitalist expectations. And that’s where we catch up with Chinaski, in New Orleans in the rain at 5am with a bunch of people who depress him with their morose appearance.

Other works throughout history have documented the sense of malaise he feels about his life. George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) is one example.

Factotum is the distinctly Americanised alternative.

Chinaski has an all-American quality to him, wrapped up in a timeless sense of half-assed slobbery. Life has given this guy way too many punches to the gut for him to consider making anything of himself now.

He knows the score.

He knows this is all irrelevant and, frankly, he just needs some minimum wage pay so he can get some beer or wine and get wasted.

And that’s the nature of this work. In Los Angeles, he drifts from one job to the next getting sacked. Okay, so Bukowski’s sardonic style won’t be for everyone and his approach to women in the work is problematic by modern standards.

Yet, many an employee will identify with Chinaski’s plight. The drudgery of work and mindlessly going from one shift to the next.

“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?”

As employment is basically about, for 99% of people, not earning very much so your boss can pay themselves huge amounts and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a tiny raise at some point.

Bukowski got that and his writing is highly anti-authority.

Some of his prose is very crude. Just absolute, to-the-point scatological humour (Mozart would have loved it), and it hits the nail on the head for those with this kind of approach to life.

“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.”

The Better Out Than In Brigade, as we’d put it. Having grown up watching BBC sitcom Bottom (by Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson) and it’s very much our thing, but not as “crude” as some snotty critics might make out.

Bottom, for example, was based off Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and features episodes regarding the pointlessness of existence with two idiotic losers.

You can see a lot of that in Factotum.

Again, people just connect with this type of thing. The day-to-day average Joe who works, gets paid, and fills his spare time with a lack of capitalistic success (under the watchful gaze of our wealthy overlords who just worked harder than us).

“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.”

Another element of the work is a sense of schadenfreude delight. No matter how crap your life is at this moment, you can bask in the joy of the misfit Chinaski bumbling his way through another humiliating job.

There’s solace in that—escapism. And comfort, too, we should think.

As it’s a funny book above all else, in amongst the low-life debauchery. There are poignant moments along the way, but there are also those bits where the skin is peeling off Chinaski’s groin to try and recover from a mites infestation. Glorious stuff, you know? Sophisticated!

The nitty-gritty of life as, when you cut through all the social construct crap, much of the time we’re covering up how we’re humans who do a lot of gross stuff each day.

We don’t like talking about it because it makes us embarrassed.

But Bukowski reminded us all that it was out there. Amongst all of us. A high-powered, superrich CEO parks himself on the toilet and clogs it, too. That’s the beauty of existence and it’s worth embracing.

Bukowski’s Search for Solitude

If you’ve read his poignant and very autobiographical Ham on Rye (1982) you’ll be aware of why Bukowski was this way.

He was quite a shy man who struggled to assert himself, his post office job leaving him highly stressed and unhappy (he took many sick days due to terrible hangovers).

You can understand why he’d create the alter-ego of uber cool Henry Chinaski, the drunken schlub who doesn’t give a fuck whether he’s fired or whatever. It’s the confident rogue he really wanted to be (at least, that’s how our theory goes).

From out of that fabrication, there emerge signs of the real Bukowski.

“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.”

Despite all the references to toilets, drinking heavily, and sticking it to the man, there’s a lot of sadness in Bukowski’s canon.

That was fully expressed in Ham on Rye, arguably his best book, which is when he unleashed his inner turmoil and frustrations. No more hiding behind an inflated alter-ego.

Again, the flashes of that do emerge in Factotum.

Chinaski is a writer, but he’s constantly rejected by publishers. What keeps him going? The belief he’s better than the other writers who are getting published.

Yet he can’t break out of his nihilistic slump. He’s in-and-out-of work, very drunk, and the book closes with his admittance of impotence. As deadbeat literature goes, it’s right up there with the very best.

Factotum’s 2005 Film Adaptation

Factotum received a film adaptation in 2005. Matt Dillon portrayed the sardonic, sullen Bukowski and his love interest Jan features was played by Lili Taylor.

It was a French-Norwegian production, strangely enough, and one that seems to have slipped off into obscurity. Worth a watch if you’re a fan of Buckowski’s work.

Directed by Bent Hamer, we think he did a strong job capturing the deadbeat nature of Chinaski’s bumbling ways.

The film met with solid reviews, with most hailing Dillon’s performance. But criticising the slow nature of the plot along with its repetitious nature. It’s even accused of being dull.

In truth, the last time we saw the film was when we were pretty drunk.

It perhaps lacks the belly laughs you might expect from a Bukowski novel, but we do think its slovenly pace accurately reflects a real-life Chinaski at work. Watch it and decide for yourselves, eh?