The Road to Los Angeles (Paperback)

"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.

Anyway, Fante held grandiose ambitions of becoming a world-renowned author and it is hard to argue that he lacked the talents. His short stories were published first and then the first novel (Wait Until Spring, Bandini) followed in 1938, then the masterpiece, Ask the Dust (1939). It seems certain Fante would have made a name for himself had his luck held in 1939, but his publisher went bankrupt and there was no money to promote the novel. So, as time passed Fante turned to film scripts to pay the rent and was lost to literature until, in 1982, Dreams From Bunker Hill appeared, just a year before Fante passed away.

My simple point is that Fante has been neglected and if you happen to stumble upon his work, you may be amazed that his is not a household name. Remember, Fante was a contemporary of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and where Fitzgerald had the melancholy finesse, Hemingway had the bold style and passion of the storyteller and Fante was perhaps the writer of a generation to possess that cold, visceral honesty that is so engaging and, at times, depressing.

This novel, The Road to LA, is another curiosity for it was Fante's first completed novel, the manuscript finished in 1936, and it marked the beginning of the Arturo Bandini saga (oft seen as the alter ego of the author). The book was rejected and not published until 1985, after the author's death. It is not the best piece from the author, sympathy for Bandini is harder to come by, most likely because Fante seems less accessible, more introspective than elsewhere. The story is simple enough, we follow the 18-yr old Bandini as he struggles in the depression-era. He is a poor kid, a loner and he is lost in his own imagination. The perpetual belief in his own superiority and his own ability as a great writer (the Great Bandini!) keep him going and drive him onwards. But these are the fantasies of a child, detached from reality and hopelessly angst-ridden. Perhaps it is just my predilection, but i find the tales of the young man and the young boy more interesting and more heartfelt than this one of the adolescent.

It is a genuinely great read and i consider Fante like a soulmate on the back of the Bandini works, but this is certainly not the best of the lot.