Charles Bukowski-Factotum Genre: Description:Eternal lyric (more antilirichesky) Bukowski hero Henry Chinaski travels across America during the Second World Cities and towns burns “war fever.” Life is in full swing – and often on the head. Whiskey flows like a river that flows into the sea of beer. The women are beautiful and affordable. Leggi «Factotum» di Charles Bukowski disponibile su Rakuten Kobo. One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows.
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Full text of 'More Notes of aDirty Old ManThe Uncollected ColuansCharles BukowskiEdited, with an Afterword,hy David Stephen CalonneCity Lights Books. San FranciscoTable of ContentsTitle PageMORE NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MANL2 ^L2 ^3,4,0li6 /03133SOURCESAFTERWORDNOTESo/ 4 WAcknowledgmentsCopyright PageMORE NOTES OF A DIRTYOLDMANGod knows I am not too hippy. Perhapsbecause I am too much around the hip and Ifear fads for, like anybody else, I likesomething that tends to last.
Then, too, thehippy foundation or diving board or restingplace or whatever you want to call it doessuck in its fair share of fakes, promoters andgenerally vicious people trying to overcom-pensate for some heinous psychological de-fect. But you have these everywhere— hippyand non-hippy. But, like I say, the few peoplethat I know are either a bit on the side of theartistic, the pro-hip or the understanding-hip, so I have been generally getting more ofthis slice of cake and it has seemed a bitSWEET.o/4WBut, lo, the other day I got the OTHER bitand I think I’d rather eat sweet than shit. Be-ing locked into a large building where 4,000people work at dull and menial tasks has itscompensations but it has disadvantagestoo— for instance, you can never be sure whois going to assigned to work next to you. Abad soul makes for a worse night. Enoughbad souls can kill you.He was balding, square-jawed, man-nish???, with this look of hate-frustrationupon his face. For months I had sensed thathe had wanted to talk to me.
Now I washooked— he was assigned to the place to myleft. He complained about the air-condition-ing and a few other things, then worked in aquestion about my age. I told him that Iwould be 47 in August. He said he was 49.“Age is only relative,” he said. “It doesn’tmatter if you are 47 or 49, it doesn’t makeany difference.”“Umm,” I said.Then the speaker screamed out some an-nouncement: ALL THOSE QUALIFIED ONTHE L.S.M. MACHINES REPORT TO.“I thought they were going to say LSD,” hesaid.“Umm,” I said.“You know,” he said, “that LSD has put alot of people in madhouses— brain damage.”“Everything puts people in madhouses.”“Whatcha mean?”“I mean the LSD brain damage scare isprobably an exaggeration percentage-wise.”“Oh no, leading doctors and laboratoriesand hospitals say so.”“O.K.”We worked away without conversation forawhile and I thought I had escaped him.
Hehad one of those easy mellow voices thatdrowned and warbled in its own conviction.But he began again:“Are you for LSD?”“I don’t use it.”“Don’t you think it’s a passing fad?”“Nothing that is against the law everceases to exist.”“Whatcha mean?”“Forget it.”“Whatcha think of the hippies?”“They don’t harm me.”“Their hair stinks,” he said. “They don’ttake baths. They don’t work.”“I don’t like to work either.”“Anything that is unproductive is not goodfor society.”“Umm.”“Some college profs say that these kids areour new leaders, that we should listen tothem. HOW THE HELL CAN THEY KNOWANYTHING? THEY DON’T HAVE ANYEXPERIENCE.”“Experience can dull.
With most men ex-perience is a series of mistakes; the more ex-perience you have the less you know.”“You mean to say you are going to listen towhat some 13-year-old kid tells you?”“I listen to everything.”“But they aren’t mature, they aren’tMATURE, don’t you see? That’s why they’rehippies.”“Suppose they got jobs? Suppose theywent into industry, went to work turningbolts for General Motors? Wouldn’t they stillbe immature?”“No, because they’d be working,” he said.“Umm.”“Furthermore, I think a lot of these kidsare going to be SORRY that they didn’t go tothe war. It’s going to be an experience they’llwish they hadn’t missed. They’re going to re-gret it later on.”“Umm.”There fell again the peaceful silence. Thenhe said, “you’re not a hippy, are you?”“I’m working, damn it.
And I told you Iwas 47.”“The beard doesn’t mean anything then,does it?”“Sure it does. It means, at the moment, Ifeel better wearing a beard than I do the oth-er way. Maybe next week it will be different.”Silence, silence. Then he switched hisstool, turned his back to me as much as pos-sible and continued working. I got up andwalked to the men’s crapper and stuck myhead out the window for fresh air. The guywas my father all over again:RESPONSIBILITY, SOCIETY, COUNTRY,DUTY, MATURITY, all the dull-soundinghard words.
But why were they in suchagony? Why did they hate so much? Itseemed simply that they were very muchafraid that somebody else was having adamn good time or was not unhappy most ofthe time.
It seemed that they wanted every-body to carry the same damn heavy rock theywere carrying. It wasn’t ENOUGH that I wasworking beside him like an idiot; it wasn’tenough for him that I was wasting the fewgood hours left in my life— no, he alsowanted me to share his own mind-soul, tosniff his dirty stockings, to chew on his an-gers and hates with him. I was not PAID forthat, the fucker.
And that’s what killed youon the job— not the actual physical work butbeing closed in with the dead.I got on back to my stool. He had his backturned to me. Poor, poor fellow.
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I had let himdown. He’d have to look elsewhere.
And Iwas white and he was white and most ofthem were black. Where ya gonna find a de-cent white man in a place like this? I couldsense him thinking.I suppose he would have gotten around tothe Negro question if I had sent out theproper rays. I had been spared that.His back was to me. His back was broad,American and hard. But I couldn’t see hisface and he didn’t speak any more.
What hadhurt him worst was that I had neither agreed+ 4 /499with or argued with him.