Factotum

Name: Factotum
Brand: Harper Audio
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Author: Charles Bukowski
ISBN: 9780062302939

Author: Charles Bukowski

Narrator: Christian Baskous

Unabridged: 5 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/13/2013

Categories: Fiction

Synopsis

One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.

About Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.Abel Debritto, a former Fulbright scholar and current Marie Curie fellow, works in the digital humanities. He is the author of Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground, and the editor of the Bukowski collections On Writing, On Cats, and On Love.

Reviews

Goodreads review by P.F. on October 01, 2009

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 i......more

Goodreads review by Vit on December 13, 2023

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.” “W......more

Goodreads review by Jim on July 13, 2023

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,......more

Goodreads review by Mutasim on August 05, 2020

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 fo......more

Goodreads review by Joshua Nomen-Mutatio on August 03, 2016

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......more