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Almost forgotten … John Fante
by Rob Woodard
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Ask the Dust, by John Fante. Today it’s widely regarded as a classic of American Literature; many have declared it the finest novel ever to emerge from Los Angeles. In addition to critical praise, the book has also found popular success, appearing on bestseller lists in both the US and Europe. In 2006 it was even made into a Hollywood Film, starring Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell. But Fante’s masterpiece has not always enjoyed such prominence. In fact, its journey to its current status has been long and highly unusual.
The novel tells the story of Arturo Bandini, a young Italian-American from Boulder, Colorado who moves to LA to try and make it as a writer. Penniless but hopeful, Bandini soon finds himself locked in an intense battle with his insanely demanding muse as well as the City of Angels itself, which he sees as a maddening mix of smug wealth and heartbreaking poverty. Mirroring these themes and driving much of the novel’s action is Bandini’s wildly destructive relationship with Camilla Lopez, an unstable young Mexican waitress, whose beauty represents much of what Arturo craves, but whose ethnicity (in the context of 1930s America) forces him to confront his own ancestry and the pain that drives so much of his life.
At the time of Ask the Dust’s release in 1939, Fante appeared to be a writer on the rise. His first novel, Wait Until Spring, was well received; his short stories were appearing in prominent publications such as the American Mercury, and he had a long-distance mentor in HL Mencken, at that time one of America’s most influential men of letters. With all these things going for him, Fante was poised to take his place alongside Steinbeck as one of the era’s most important Californian writers when his incendiary sophomore novel hit the stands. However, Ask the Dust received mixed reviews, sold very poorly, and quickly fell out of print. And that’s how things stayed for the next four decades.
This failure drove Fante into a chequered career as a Hollywood screenwriter, and largely spelled the end of his career as a novelist. By the late 1970s, when Fante was nearing the end of life, he had been almost completely forgotten by the general public and most of the literary establishment as well. However, he had his admirers - and so did Ask the Dust. While writing the screenplay for Chinatown in the early 1970s, Robert Towne (who later directed and wrote the film of Ask the Dust) turned to Fante’s by then very obscure novel in search of a template for authentic 1930s-era dialogue. By the late 1970s LA poet-playwright-journalist Ben Pleasants had begun a series of interviews with a declining Fante and published an important overview of his life and work in the LA Times Book Review in 1979. However, it was Pleasants’s friend, the now famous poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, who played the most important role in bringing Fante and his great novel back into public view.
As a struggling young writer haunting the streets of Los Angeles, al la Arturo Bandini, Bukowski had stumbled upon a copy of Ask the Dust in the public library. Fante immediately became a huge influence on the younger man’s writing, to the point where Bukowski would later declare that “Fante was my god.” Much later Bukowski introduced Ask the Dust to his publisher, John Martin. Martin recognised the novel as a classic and Fante as a major writer, and soon republished it from his Black Sparrow Press where, over the next three-plus decades it would slowly gather a large, adoring audience, while reaping seemingly endless critical praise.
Several years ago, Martin sold Black Sparrow Press. At this point Ask the Dust (along with most of Fante’s oeuvre, which Black Sparrow also now published) found its way to Echo Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, where it has garnered an even larger audience. It’s amazing to think, though, that if a young Charles Bukowski had missed Ask the Dust during his time in the LA library, the book’s later success might never have come about: it likely would have stayed out of print and Fante would probably be remembered, if he was remembered at all, as another burned-out old screenwriter and failed novelist. Instead, he’s seen today as a powerful pre-Beat writer who wrote one of the most influential and important novels of the last, well, 70 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jan/14/john-fante-ask-dust
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The books i have read this year (expect to see this list a lot in this blog):
1. Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
2. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
4. The World According to Garp - John Irving
5. The Outsider by Albert Camus
6. Franny and Zooey - J.D Salinger
7. Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
8. Candy: A novel of love and addiction - Luke Davies
9. 1984 - George Orwell
10. The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
11. Daisy Miller - Henry James
12. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
13. Less than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
14. The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis
This book wasn’t fantastic but it was alright. As usual, twas a little disturbing in places but Chapter 10 - The Secrets of Summer was probably one of my favourite written pieces that I have read in awhile. It reminded me of The Rules of Attraction.
Next book is either Emma by Jane Austen or Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.
I haven’t decided yet. I’m gonna try to get to at least 18 books by the end of the year…hope I do.
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Call me a geek all you want. I find libraries to be extremly relaxing. &yes .. I DO read for fun.
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I love the Showtime series Dexter, so I’ve started to read the books too. Currently reading the one shown above.
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the sator square via contrariwise (literary tattoos - thanks for the heads up, library land ;)
This tattoo belongs to Mirabai Knight:
This is my Latin palindrome tattoo. It’s not from any specific literary work; it’s actually a piece of graffiti dating back at least 2,000 years. It’s been found inscribed on walls and stones in cities all over Europe, from Herculaneum to Manchester. It literally translates to “The sower Arepo holds the wheels at work”, and might have its origins in the worship of Mithras, Persian god of the sun, though not much is conclusively known. It’s the only sentence in any language that can be arranged in a grid to read identically in four different directions.
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GPOYW - I Can’t Stop Reading This Book Edition!
I’m at a crossroads; I want to do nothing except read, but I want the book to last me awhile because it’s so fantastic (which is hard because I read like a speed demon).
Not only is this book a good story, but it’s giving me such insightful life advice. It came at a really good time in my life. I’m especially excited to get to the ‘pray’ part of the novel.
Read more about the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, on her website; she’s an amazing woman!
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skaa:
but i did take this book out of the library today.
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Last weekend, I happened upon a copy of Sterling’s new Alice in Wonderland edition, with illustrations by Robert Ingpen. Ingpen’s beautiful, dreamy illustrations are as lovely an interpretation of the subject as I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. Of course, the text is what it is, a masterpiece (it’s the first book I ever read to myself, and I went on to marry a woman called Alice, so that should tell you how I feel about it). And Ingpen’s art brings something genuinely new to it, a cloudlike insubstantiality tinged with a little bit of thunderhead, that makes me incredibly glad to own this book.
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I bought this book on Sunday, started reading yesterday and finished it today. I loved it. I almost cried when I read the ending. I thought it was just one novel. Just thirty minutes ago, I discovered that there’s gonna be a sequel to it called Linger, due for release on July 20 2010.
Cannot wait. Maggie Stiefvater is like my new favourite author. Stephenie Meyer, you just lost the battle of charming werewolves. =D
As Bart Simpson once said, EAT MY SHORTS!
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Getting The Pretty Back by Molly Ringwald out in April
rkb:
Did I know Molly Ringwald was writing a memoir? Not sure, but apparently she is and it’s out in April from It Books.
As the endearing, witty, and immediately recognizable star of the beloved John Hughes classics Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club, Molly Ringwald defined teenage angst, love, and heartbreak for her generation, and those that have followed. But though remembered eternally as a teen, Molly Ringwald recently celebrated her 40th birthday! Facing this new angst-inducing time in her life, Molly has chosen to embrace her forties with style, candor, and humor-offering her personal stories and practical advice in the full-color, lushly illustrated Getting the Pretty Back.
Showing women that her life didn’t begin and end in a teen movie, Molly shares a unique mix of memoir and advice that will charm fans and empower women to embrace any age. Weaving together stories and advice on sex and beauty, personal style, travel and entertaining, motherhood, relationships and friendship, Molly embodies the spirit of being fabulous at 40, and reminds readers that life only gets more exciting after the sixteen candles are blown out.
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Indispensable Books, Part III - Roberto Bolaño, 2666
the problem with reading bolaño is that you really have to read all of his books to pick up on themes and tangents throughout, for example, the title of 2666 is not actually mentioned in the book itself, but in another of his books, a road is referred to as looking like a cemetery from the year 2666. to read something by bolaño is to some extent be forced to read his entire oeuvre. not that this is necessarily a bad thing.
in one of his last interviews he stated that had he not been a writer, he would have liked to have been a homicide detective. and you can see it—some of his central themes are bizarre mysteries, violence, death. how we process them. what they mean. a critic described the events of 2666 as something terrible, cosmic, and horrible centering around santa teresa… the uncanny moments where the world seems wrong.
the book itself is concerned with a series of murders of women in a place that can only have been modeled on the ciudad juarez. it also features different sections, in which four literary critics discuss a semi-mythical author whose life and work absorb them; this author himself is part of other leading strands of the novel. it is hard to read: one book is clinical descriptions of the murders of hundreds of young women. the cumulative effect of all of this violence, terror, mystery, is breathtaking. and terrifying. the book is a bit like a punch in the gut. several punches in the gut.
to really appreciate it you would need to start reading for yourself. but bolaño without a doubt deserves all of the accolades that have been heaped upon him.
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These books look so ridiculously cheesy. DON”T judge a book by its cover. I don’t think there is a more accurate account of female adolescence to adulthood than the Jessica Darling series. Megan McCafferty has been reading my mind since the 10th grade.
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