Factotum by Charles Bukowski

This book describes the 20s and 30s of Bukowski's life.  It starts where "Ham and Rye" finishes, and ends before "Post Office" begins.  Of course, in between are the "10 years of drunken blackout" as Bukowski likes to call it.  It is written in his recognizable style, and fans will love his flowing prose and conversational writing.  It has even less women in it than "Post Office", so any accusations of misogyny would have even less proof than in his other books.

The book describes Bukowski traveling around the US: St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, etc. and working random menial jobs, from where the title of the novel comes from.  A couple of times he tries to get a job as a journalist, mentioning that he has two years of Journalism at LA City College, but editors are uninterested, and instead offer him job as a janitor, which he soon abandons.

The two important women in the book are Jan and Laura.  Jan is round-of-the-mill barfly, promiscuous alcoholic that Bukowski (Chinaski) shacks up with several times, but as he puts it, things went downhill when Jan would "not get her four fucks per day". Laura on the other hand has a rich sugar daddy, who also keeps two other women around, and she shops on his credit.  However, when the rich sugar daddy dies after consuming a bottle of vodka, the whole gig falls apart, and Chinaski says that he "never saw Laura" or the other two women again.

The 2015 movie "Factotum" is quite accurate representation of some plot points in the book, though Bukowski's writings are simply unfilmable.  The whole immersive experience in Bukowski's writings is to do with his internal dialogue, and his take on descriptions of places, things and people (with his dark humor and sarcasm), which cannot possibly be transferred to a visual medium, unless the entire thing is done as a full narration.

The 1986 movie "Barfly", for which Bukowski wrote the script, and appeared as a bar wino, and also used the experience to write a scathing novel about the film industry ("Hollywood"), is also based largely on "Factotum", but the script takes other liberties and veers off the actual book, which might a good thing, more original content.  Mickey Rourke had down the general leering, non-serious attitude that Chinaski shows in the books, but Matt Dillon is closer to how Chinaski treats other people, especially women.  Both films are interesting to watch, but nothing special in the big picture of things.  Just read the books.