‘Factory Summers’ Is an Ode to the Terrible Summer Job

Terrible summer jobs are a rite of passage for most people. Picking strawberries in the broiling sun, whiling away listless retail hours in a bleak corner of a mall or serving ice cream to whiny kids and their strung-out parents. We’ve all been there.

Guy Delisle’s graphic novel-cum-memoir Factory Summers has all the pathos, boredom, confusion and grim camaraderie that summer employment entails, crisply rendered in a limited palette of Payne’s grey, mustard yellow, black and white.

At the tender age of 16, Delisle started work at a pulp and paper mill in Quebec City. Built in 1927 and sporting the ornate deco-influenced style of the times, the mill supplied paper to newspaper giants like the New York Times. Since the place opened its doors, its massive rollers and lifts have been attended and stroked along by an army of men whose job it is to keep the machines happy.

As much as it is a lesson in the intricacies of the paper production industry, Factory Summers is more about the society of men at work. Homoerotic interludes in the shower, brutal teasing and the occasional spike of ornery pride in mastering a terrible job — young Delisle learns it all the hard way.

Twelve-hours shifts with machines that can easily turn a human body into red paste are only one aspect. A trickier complexity is navigating relationships with the lifers, men who have given the bulk of their time over to the Moloch machinery.

The only place of respite from the industrial atmosphere is a soundproof hut in the middle of the factory floor where the men take their breaks and shoot the shit. But even here, there’s no escape from the constant teasing and carping. Anything that disturbs the order of the place, whether it’s some new kid’s rattail hairdo or the fact that Delisle wants to become an artist, come in for derision and scorn.

The casual sexism of this male-only world manifests in exchanges about sex and ogling naked ladies that pop up randomly on the breakroom television. Fleeting exchanges with Delisle’s mother and a random girl he likes offer the only female presence. The real relationship is between men and the job.

The book is filled with a wealth of keenly observed moments. Delisle captures the way time expands elastically on long shifts, and the brief moments of escape outside of work on late-night bike rides or solitary sojourns at the local library. Bittersweet doesn’t quite do it justice. The poignancy of the period, the bubble moment between youth and adult is caught and pinned in place by drawings that are both honest and aching at the same time.

Despite the harshness of the place, Delisle comes back year after year, earning money for his studies at animation school in Toronto. Every summer there are a few new faces, and most of the old-timers still punching the clock and telling the same stories. But amongst the bleakness and the boredom, shining moments of transcendence emerge, made all the more resplendent by their rarity. In one of his final shifts at the mill, Delisle makes his way to the roof and is greeted by something extraordinary.

Factory Summers is filled with the hard lessons that linger long after the job is over. It might just transport you back, body and soul, to a time when summers seemed endless, and work was just a way station to something hopefully better.