Brian Moore's "Luck of Ginger Coffey"

It would be predictable--the great American novel was written by an Irishman "The Luck of Ginger Coffey" by Brian Moore (1960) is about a grandiose Irish guy who thinks he's all that (like Bill W.) and moves his family to Canada, and then his wife splits and Ginger lives at the Y and does all kinds of weird jobs... much like my early twenties.Now he'd be on Social Security Disability

There's this great part where he's hired by a newspaper that PROMISES him if he works as a proofreader for a certain amount of time, they'll promote him to reporter, and of course it's just a trick, kind of like when I was told that if I did an internship for the Evans & Novak report, where all I did was edit his newsletter and make coffee, that I'd be found a job by the National Journalism Center's Job Bank, and of course I was screwed over and had to work as a typist....