Facts are full of dreary compromises and dead ends. Stare at them long enough and you'll go insane. Charlie's solution to this was to tinker, with headlamp and toolbox, in the workshop of the American dream, and to emerge sometime later with a diamond-cut hope that might make him a killing and redeem his lost time. This wasn't easy to dismiss as child's play or a variety of magical thinking; it was the most a man could be.