The alienated subject and the capitalist machine : the case of Henry Chinaski

Abstract

"Factotum‟, published in 1975, tells the daily life of Henry Chinaski, writer's own transcript, a writer who lives with resignation and weariness after being saved from going to war, and accepts all kinds of rubbish jobs to survive, and to clear his conscience while focused on pursuing what really fulfils him: writing. His self-destructive behavior seems to respond viscerally to a sort of instinctive urge in a universe declining and lacking self-pity. Chinaski is too conscious of his curse, he is destined to live a difficult existence in which he finds people predictable or he simply "do not like" them. For the purpose of the analysis of his writing style, „Factotum‟ and several poems from the anthology „The Pleasures of the Damned‟ will be necessary. It has been said that Bukowski with his terse, brusque and forceful prose, is the atrocious novelist of the great urban jungle: the destitute, prostitutes, drunks, in other words, he is the novelist of the human waste of the American Dream.