THE AUTOPSY OF FACTOTUM (PART I)
Chinaski is a Failed Übermensch
This week, I went through Bukowski’s six novels again (just my highlighted sections and comments), and I’m having more thoughts than before. Once, he said, “John Fante is my God.” Later, I read John Fante as well, but for me, Bukowski is a lost God. Bukowski’s Factotum is a hymn for the lost, the degenerate, and the unfuckwithably indifferent. It is a novel that does not rise; it sinks. It is the anti-hero’s handbook, a blueprint for failure worn like a badge of honour. But what happens when we dissect it? What does Factotum look like when its liver is laid bare under a harsh existential light?
I spent many days in a rendezvous with his poems and fictions—especially Ham on Rye and his first novel, Post Office. Let me tell you about him a bit. He was born in 1920, a German-American p…