Ask the Dust (19 page)

“[Fante's] last work…a mordantly funny look at life as a ‘Hollywood whore.'”

—The Guardian
(London)

THE ROAD TO LOS ANGELES

I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead. My first job was ditchdigging a short time after I graduated from high school. Every night I couldn't sleep from the pain in my back. We were digging an excavation in an empty lot, there wasn't any shade, the sun came straight from a cloudless sky, and I was down in that hole digging with two huskies who dug with a love for it, always laughing and telling jokes, laughing and smoking bitter tobacco
.

“[
The Road to Los Angeles
] wasn't published until 1985 when it was found among the author's papers, two years after his death. It has come to be regarded as something of a lost classic.”

—The Observer
(London)

Other Works and Collections

THE JOHN FANTE READER
,
edited by Stephen Cooper

The John Fante Reader
includes excerpts from Fante's novels and stories along with never-before-published letters.

“Either the work of John Fante…is unknown to you or it is unforgettable. He was not the kind of writer to leave room in between….
The John Fante Reader
is poised to win him a well-deserved place in the mainstream.”

—Janet Maslin,
New York Times

JOHN FANTE: SELECTED LETTERS
1932–1981,
edited by Seamus Cooney

Fante's captivating letters trace his emergence from poverty to life as a Hollywood screenwriter. Complemented by many photos and interesting appendices, the book is most distinguished by Fante's letters to his mother—letters in which he is just as apt to lie about church attendance as he is to describe, with peculiar candor, skinny-dipping with a girlfriend.

THE BIG HUNGER: STORIES 1932–1959

Here are eighteen stories collected for the first time, among them a number of “intelligent and meaningful tales of the immigrant experience”

(
Publishers Weekly
).

“Each story seems a chiseled jewel, sharply glittering, and without a speck of excess. Fante's gift for dialogue becomes immediately apparent in his opening story, ‘Horselaugh on Dibber Lannon,' but shines with something close to perfection in his later story ‘Mary Osaka, I Love You.' Set during the outbreak of World War II, it tells of love between a Japanese woman and a Filipino man.”

—San Diego Union-Tribune

WEST OF ROME: TWO NOVELLAS

West of Rome
's two novellas, “My Dog Stupid” and “The Orgy,” fulfill the promise of their rousing titles. The latter novella opens with virtuoso description: “His name was Frank Gagliano, and he did not believe in God. He was that most singular and startling craftsman of the building trade—a left-handed bricklayer. Like my father, Frank came from Torcella Peligna, a cliff-hugging town in the Abruzzi. Lean as a spider, he wore a leather cap and puttees the year around, and he was so bowlegged a dog could lope between his knees without touching them.”

THE WINE OF YOUTH: SELECTED STORIES

This new edition of the legendary
Dago Red
, first published in 1940, contains seven new stories, including “A Nun No More” and “My Father's God.”

 

“Here is a book where the author's talent lies over each page bright as sunlight on a fresh green lawn.”

—New York Times
(reviewing
Dago Red
)