Ask the Dust [Paperback]

for christ's sake read this - I have still not discovered anything quite as beautiful.

It is the tale of a young Italian American called Arturo Bandini, who moves down to Los Angeles from a cold northern town in Colorado, to follow his dream of becoming a great writer. Bandini is a fantastic character and he appears in a number of other novels by John Fante. Bandini is over-emotional, sometimes aggressive and hateful but sometimes gentle and vulnerable. He is blessed with huge ambition and an apparently unshakable confidence in his abilities, while at the same time he is cursed with a despairing sense of self-doubt. Above all, he is touchingly and brutally honest about himself and the world around him.

Bandini is a great literary creation that manages to delight and frustrate the reader in equal measure. Bandini is, in essence, John Fante's alter-ego, so perhaps his creation was made simpler by his similarity to the author. But Fante brings his creation to life with verve, humour and honesty that makes the book still seem refreshing after all these years.

"Ask the Dust" finds Arturo Bandini alone in Los Angeles, living in a tatty hotel room with only enough money to eat oranges. His only company is Pedro the mouse, but even he deserts Bandini when he no longer has enough money for food. He has managed to publish one short story under the tutelage of his literary hero, J.C. Hackmuth, and he attempts to continue along the path of literary greatness while all the distractions of LA life, as well as his own hunger and poverty, conspire to distract him.

Bandini longs to own some of the riches of the American dream, and above all he longs for acceptance. When he meets the Mexican waitress Camilla Lopez, the tale of the poverty-stricken artist becomes a tale of aching desire, longing, confusion and madness. John Fante lovingly describes the confused feelings of Bandini for the beautiful Camilla; the longing he feels mixed with the strange disgust, the feelings of inadequacy and fear of rejection. It is when Fante is writing about these extreme emotions that you really feel the power of his writing. There are countless examples of the flowing beauty and power of his prose. One that comes to mind is his description of when Bandini goes to a sleazy dancing hall and ogles the dancers along with the other men, but stops to notice the men around him "shouting their share of a sick joy that belonged to me."

Camilla and Bandini's feelings for each other alternate from a strange longing to a violent, mutual disgust. They insult each other because of their non-American origins, something which hurts them both. In one of the most moving passages of the book, Bandini pours forth his feelings on feeling left out, always feeling to be an outsider because of his Italian origins, after he insults Camilla. This is a theme that comes up a lot in John Fante's work: the outsider, the bullied one, finding himself victimising and bully others, only to deeply regret his actions later. Fante is a master at honestly portraying the multitude of conflicting emotions people feel when they are in love, when they feel desire, when they have ambition, when they feel rejected and when they feel confusion about their very identity. If you have ever felt any of these emotions you will find something you recognise in "Ask the Dust".

John Fante is an unfairly neglected author and this novel is an unfairly neglected classic. He was only saved from total obscurity because Charles Bukowski championed his books after Fante's death, and this is unfortunate because it suggests that Fante was in some way subordinate to Bukowski. They were two very different writers, and Fante predated Bukowski by many years. The book's not perfect, but then its author was still young when he wrote it, and there's no telling what great books he could have created if he had continued along the path of the writer, and continued at the craft with the discipline of his early years. I strongly advise you to get this book, make yourself comfortable, and savour each beautiful sentence.