Factotum [1975] - Charles Bukowski

"I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power."

Factotum is a humorous and strongly autobiographical narrative from "the poet laureate of skid row" that follows an alcoholic drifter through a series of menial jobs as he travels aimlessly across the country. Before devoting himself entirely to writing, Bukowski worked various dead-end jobs, including as a laborer in a dog biscuit factory, a parking lot attendant, stock boy, warehouseman, red cross orderly, elevator operator, poster hanger in New York City subways, shipping clerk, postal clerk and postal carrier. At the age of 23, Bukowski finally lost his virginity to an overweight whore in Philadelphia.

In straightforward and unsentimental prose, Bukowski depicts his alter-ego, Henry Chinaski, a loner and outcast who lives for booze and despises work with a passion. The character of Jan is based on Jane Cooney Baker, the great love of Bukowski's life, a widowed alcoholic 11 years his senior with an immense beer belly. Baker spent the last days of her life working as a maid in a cheap hotel before dying of a massive hemorrhage in 1962. As for Bukowski, the self-proclaimed "barfly" lived out his later years in a ranch-style house in San Pedro, California, with an attractive young wife 24 years his junior, expensive German wines on the rack and a BMW in the driveway.