What we're reading: Factotum by Charles Bukowski

I'm going to ruin the end for you right this second. If you're not OK with that, skip the next paragraph.

The novel ends with Charles Bukowski's alter-ego, Henry Chinaski, getting drunk while waiting online for a shot at a temp job. He gets kicked out of agency, goes to a strip show in a theater with a live band, and he can't get an erection. The end.

Bukowski was clearly drinking when he wrote the book: the grammar errors pile up near the end of the book, a sure sign that someone's brain is degenerating as the writing goes on.

In case you're wondering about the editors: Some publishing houses have a short list of authors whose work is untouchable. If you've read Jack Kerouac or William S. Burroughs, you understand why – they intentionally twist the language so much, that you wouldn't dare correct what you think is an error in the prose.

By 1975, Bukowski had certainly become one of those writers.

Bukowski's prose tastes like cheap whiskey and stale cigarettes. His characters are wholly unlikable assholes. You don't feel good at the end of his books. So why do I read him?

Well, because it's damn cold outside and if the prose burns going down, maybe nothing else has to.

Or maybe it's because Chinaski just makes me feel better about myself. Nobody's perfect, but most people aren't that much of a fuck-up into their 40s.

This book did, by the way, provide the inspiration for one of my favorite recurring characters in fiction: the Emperor of San Francisco, who appears in some of Christopher Moore's novels. He gets a passing mention in Factotum, but in Moore's work, he is a homeless man with a scepter and two dogs. Everybody knows him, and he and his pups frequently save the city.