- Paperback: 164 pages
- Publisher: Black Sparrow Press (Nov 1986)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0876856490
- ISBN-13: 978-0876856499
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15 x 1.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 479,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Road to Los Angeles: Bandini Quartet, Book 4
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.80
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Road to Los Angeles for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.80, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
Arturo Bandini, who lives with his mother and sister in Depression-era California, rejects religion and work and dreams of becoming a great writer.
From the Back Cover
The Road to Los Angeles was John Fante's first novel, written in 1933, where he introduced readers to the brash young Arturo Bandini. Bandini is a self-proclaimed genius, a Nietzchean superman, knocking on the door of literary fame and fortune, surrounded by ignorance and fools. Or so he likes to believe, as he flits from menial job to job, despising all whose views are beneath him.
In this savage, uncompromising debut novel Fante has written a coming-of-age classic which easily compares with The Catcher in the Rye but predates it by several decades. This is the first in the four-book Arturo Bandini cycle of novels ans was discovered posthumously among his paper in 1983. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I first read John Fante I felt as if I had a great new friend, someone I wished I had known all my life. If you like books that communicate eternal, human truths to you, books that remind you of the way you felt when you were growing up, and the way you still feel today, then you will love John Fante. It's a shame the Fante never achieved much recognition when he was living and working, and that he is not as famous as he should be today, but I'm just glad he ever wrote anything at all.
"The Road to Los Angeles" is the first novel John Fante wrote, and it is probably the weakest of the books I have read so far (I am still making my way through all the books ever written by him). It's the weakest, but it still manages to make you shiver with recognition at the pure, emotional honesty of the writing. It still delights you with the orchestral, flowing sentences that are a John Fante trademark, sentences that can make you laugh and almost cry at the same time. (Try not to read John Fante on the bus, or people will look at you funny). This book seems to be John Fante finding his style, honing his craft and working out when he can go over the top, and when he should restrain the raw emotion and exaggerations that gush out of his prose sometimes.
Like many of John Fante's available books "The Road to Los Angeles" tells the story of Arturo Bandini, a compulsive, emotional young Italian American who feels that he has a calling to a higher purpose, and has a hilariously unshakeable confidence that he will soon escape the drudgery of his life. In this instalment of the Bandini saga, young Arturo is eighteen, he has just left school, and he finds himself having to support his mother and sister with a succession of menial jobs. Because of his own pigheadedness, his compulsive behaviour, and his conviction that he is better than the drudgery that surrounds him because he knows long words and reads Nietzche, Bandini manages to get fired from all his jobs. Eventually he gets a job at a fish cannery, and he comes home every night stinking of fish, secretly plotting his apotheosis with his plans to become a great writer.
There are certainly parallels with James Joyce, but the way John Fante so brilliantly portrays the burning yearning for something more and raw emotional intensity of youth, has a lot in common with that other American classic, J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye". If you grew up thinking you were Holden Caulfield, you'll love this, and it will remind you why you loved reading in the first place. Bandini is compulsive, selfish, and foolish, but he's one of us! He's one of those kids who is never satisfied with what's there in front of him, one of those kids who feels he had something inside him to give to the world, if only the world would want it. He's one of those kids who escapes through reading, who wants to become clever by reading lots of books with big words. Anyone who ever posed with an Albert Camus book in their teens, while not entirely understanding it, is sure to identify with the words:
"It was always the park. I read a hundred books. There was Nietzche and Schopenhauer and Kant and Spengler and Strachey and others. Oh Spengler! What a book! What weight! Like the Los Angeles telephone directory. Day after day I read it, never understanding it, never caring either, but reading it because I liked one growling word after another marching across pages with somber mysterious rumblings."
Read this. And then read everything else by John Fante, especially "Ask the Dust". You will laugh with Bandini, and you will cry with Bandini. He will make you remember things about your hopes and dreams that you thought you had forgotten.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Normally a harsh critic of contemporary American literature, I was stunned by this book and by Fante's inimitable talent. Words that come to mind when I think of his work are: raw, genuine, sharp, to-the-bone. The absence of stylizing is a welcome relief, like going from a stuffy, closed room into the cold night air. Fante reminds me of an unself-conscious, unfettered Hemingway. His main character, Arturo, is wonderfully self-absorbed, but the writing is not. And that combination drills into the human character without fear or shame. Fante makes no excuses for his alter-ego; he strips him of any of the dignity of privacy. And we are granted a rare view of our own humanness. I first read Fante in 1985. After "Ask the Dust" I wanted more of his work but couldn't find it on the east coast. I contacted a book broker and had the good fortune to acquire a lettered first of this one...something I would normally never bother to do. But this book is, without a doubt, an American classic...as is Fante himself.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Why do I, a foreigner, have to write the only review on such a marvelous book. Hey, it was written ages ago, and it could have been written yesterday. Fante's writing is the purest and best in his first novel. So far, far ahead of his time. Makes me think you can't learn how to write. You either are or aren't, and very few are. . .
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Indulgent and poorly structured, one of his worst.
Of the 5 john fante novels i've read this is undoubtedly the worst. Both the central protagonist and the writing style come off as incredibly irritating, indulgent and excessively... Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2008 by Jon.
Little recognised work of genius.
John Fante was one of America's most acclaimed, worshipped cult writers and this, his first novel (recovered in the '80s) is as brilliant a coming-of-age account as "Catcher... Read more
Published on 14 Oct 2000
Unusual point-of-view
This book kept me reading!Fante kept me in the peculiar mindset of the main character, Arturo, where Arturo consciously decides to present himself to the world as a jerk; but at... Read more
Published on 9 May 1999
How can a French guy adore J. Fante
All what Fante has written appears to me so full of energy and intelligence that I'm sure like Bandini I'll become, one day, a brilliant 'écrivain'. Just go at work.
Published on 12 Nov 1998
The Heart of Searching
Fante shows that everything is there and you are powerful enouph to take it. He is what is. Everything he writes your eyes will go over and over again. Read more
Published on 12 Jun 1998
all hail the crab king
I must rise to the foreigner's challenge. I, an American, adore this book and push it on everyone I know. To me, an 8 is great. Read more
Published on 3 Jun 1998
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
