Factotum

Black Sparrow Press, 1975. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1975 first trade printing, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Barbara, California), 6 3/8 x 9 1/4 inches tall hardcover in publisher's plain (unprinted) acetate dustwrapper, green paper-covered boards over black cloth spine, printed title label to spine, orange endpapers, title page printed in black, green and orange, 205 pp. One of 1,000 copies printed. The slightest of bumping to the lower edge of the front board. Otherwise, a near fine copy - clean, bright and unmarked - in an only slightly smudged acetate dust jacket. ~SP24~ [1.5P] The first edition of one of the most popular works of Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Bukowski's second novel, Factotum was adapted into a film of the same name in 2005, directed by Bent Hamer and starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei. Factotum is a picaresque novel set in the 1940s, following Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's perpetually unemployed, alcoholic alter ego, who has been rejected from the World War II draft and makes his way from one menial job to the next (hence a factotum). Bukowski's writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles and addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City.