Born in Denver on 8 April 1909, John Fante migrated to Los Angeles in his early twenties. He began writing in 1930 and had numerous short stories published in American magazines, the likes of American Mercury, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post and the Atlantic Monthly. Fante also wrote several collections of short stories and numerous screenplays, including Full of Life and Walk on the Wild Side.
His first published novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, appeared in 1938 and was followed in 1939 by Ask the Dust. Though he made his living as a screenwriter, Fante was often out of place in a town built on celluloid dreams, and was not truly discovered as a great fiction writer until many years later.
Stricken with diabetes in the ’50s, Fante lost his sight in 1978, but continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce. Dreams From Bunker Hill, his final book, was published in 1982. He died the following year at the age of 74.
Discovered posthumously among his papers was The Road to Los Angeles. Written in 1933, it was the first book he produced as part of the Arturo Bandini cycle of novels. Wait Until Spring, Bandini, though written later, was in effect a prequel that introduced us to a brash young Bandini, whom many believed to be Fante’s alter ego.
John Fante was recognised in 1987 with a Lifetime Achievement Award by PEN, Los Angeles. He is now regarded as one of the finest writers of his generation.
Also by John Fante
Dago Red (later published as The Wine of Youth: SelectedStories of John Fante) Full of LifeThe Brotherhood of the Grape1933 Was a Bad YearWest of Rome
The Big Hunger: Stories 1932–1959Selected Letters: 1932–1981
JOHN FANTE
The Bandini Quartet
Wait Until Spring, Bandini
The Road to Los Angeles
Ask the Dust
Dreams From Bunker Hill
With Introductions by
Charles Bukowski
and
Dan Fante
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,
Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
WAIT UNTIL SPRING, BANDINI.
Copyright © 1938, 1983, John Fante
THE ROAD TO LOS ANGELES. First published in
the United States of America in 1985 by Black Sparrow Press.
Copyright © Joyce Fante, 1985
ASK THE DUST. Copyright © John Fante, 1939, 1980
DREAMS FROM BUNKER HILL. Copyright © John Fante, 1982
This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books
Introduction Copyright © Charles Bukowski, 1980
Introduction Copyright © Dan Fante, 2003
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 1 84195 497 7
eISBN 978 17821 1600 4
Book Design by Jim Hutcheson
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Polmont, Stirlingshire
Contents
Introduction to Ask the Dust: by Charles Bukowski
The End of Arturo Bandini: by Dan Fante
Introduction to Ask the Dust
I was a young man, starving and drinking and trying to be a writer. I did most of my reading at the downtown L.A. Public Library, and nothing that I read related to me or to the streets or to the people about me. It seemed as if everybody was playing word-tricks, that those who said almost nothing at all were considered excellent writers. Their writing was an admixture of subtlety, craft and form, and it was read and it was taught and it was ingested and it was passed on. It was a comfortable contrivance, a very slick and careful Word-Culture. One had to go back to the pre-Revolution writers of Russia to find any gamble, any passion. There were exceptions but those exceptions were so few that reading them was quickly done, and you were left staring at rows and rows of exceedingly dull books. With centuries to look back on, with all their advantages, the moderns just weren’t very good.
I pulled book after book from the shelves. Why didn’t anybody say something? Why didn’t anybody scream out?
I tried other rooms in the library. The section on Religion was just a vast bog – to me. I got into Philosophy. I found a couple of bitter Germans who cheered me for a while, then that was over. I tried Mathematics but upper Maths was just like Religion: it ran right off me. What I needed seemed to be absent everywhere.
I tried Geology and found it curious but, finally, nonsustaining.
I found some books on Surgery and I liked the books on Surgery: the words were new and the illustrations were wonderful. I particularly liked and memorized the operation on the mesocolon.
Then I dropped out of Surgery and I was back in the big room with the novelists and short story writers. (When I had enough cheap wine to drink I never went to the library. A library was a good place to be when you had nothing to drink or to eat, and the landlady was looking for you and for the back rent money. In the library at least you had the use of the toilet facilities.) I saw quite a number of other bums in there, most of them asleep on top of their books.
I kept on walking around the big room, pulling the books off the shelves, reading a few lines, a few pages, then putting them back.
Then
