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/�ڲ���ˈ��ō��ə��/
noun
An employee who does all kinds of work.

Welcome Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's ever sarcastic, cynical, alcoholic and perpetually unemployed alter-ego. It's the 1940s, Chinaski had been rejected by the World War II drafts on account of his mental health, and he's searching for a job. A job that would serve him nicely and won't come in between him and his true love: writing.

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?��

Chinaski works one menial job after another and gets thrown out of most, except the ones he leaves on his own (hence, factotum). He constantly writes short-stories to Clay Gladmore, whose New York magazine "Frontfire" he admired. As it happens, all of them come back with a rejection slip.



“Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.��


As with most Chinaski stories, we end up finding love over drinks at a bar....

"Baby,�� I said, “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.��
She looked down at me. “Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink. "

....or over a hamburger and beer....

"She was strange; she was always hot in the morning with her hangovers. I was not so hot in the mornings with mine. I was a night man. But at night she was always screaming and throwing things at me: telephones, telephone books, bottles, glasses (full and empty), radios, purses, guitars, ashtrays, dictionaries, broken watch bands, alarm clocks…She was an unusual woman."

....only to lose it all.

“I hate it when he fucks me,�� Jan had said. She was now probably saying the same thing about me to him.

In the end, we just get a full-on Bukowski moment at a strip-joint, as we prepare to go out in a blaze of unemployed, poverty-stricken, alcoholic frenzy, but....

"And I couldn’t get it up."

Loved this book, from start to finish.