Henry Chinaski an outcast a loner & a hopeless drunk drifts around America from one dead-end job to another from one woman to another & from one bottle to the next Uncompromising gritty hilarious & confessional in turn his downward spiral is peppered with black humour Factotum follows Charles Bukowski's bestselling Post Office his highly autobiographical first novel Bukowski's Beat Generation writing reflects his slum upbringing his succession of menial jobs & his experience of low life urban America He died in 1994 & is widely acknowledged as one of the most distinctive writers of the last fifty years Neeli Cherkovski was a close friend of Bukowski & is the author of Hank The Life of Charles Bukowski (Random House 1991)