Falar de si, falar do outro: o personagem Arturo Bandini de John Fante

Os romances analisados têm como elo o personagem Arturo Bandini, considerado alter ego do escritor John Fante, cujo contexto é o da Grande Depressão americana: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), The Road to Los Angeles (cronologicamente este é o primeiro romance da saga, mas foi publicado apenas postumamente, em 1985), Ask the Dust (1939) e Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). Considerando as temáticas e o estilo de escrita de John Fante nos romances aqui discutidos, podemos relacioná-los à experiência do escritor marginal em um panorama nada favorável: um futuro pouco promissor em um país que amarga um cenário econômico recessivo. Forjado para a escrita, Bandini configura-se como uma espécie de espelhamento do autor, um personagem no qual Fante se insere através do tempo e da narrativa no âmbito da escrita de cunho autobiográfico.

Where Spirituality Ebbs and Flows: Religion and Diasporic Alienation in Ask the Dust

In recent scholarship on the work of John Fante, issues of spirituality and the sacred have not been a popular emphasis. Yet in Ask the Dust spirituality is intrinsically tied to representations of the Italian diasporic experience in the United States, including social alienation and selective accommodation, two key concepts in diaspora theory. Despite his self-professed Americanism, Fante’s protagonist Arturo Bandini faces alienation by members of Los Angeles’s white majority, and he hesitates to adopt entirely the social mores of this culture into which he has thrust himself. The ensuing ebb and flow of his spirituality becomes a barometer of both of these experiences. Bandini’s skepticism about organized religion and even the existence of God marks his attempts to shake off his Italian cultural inheritance and accommodate the norms of secular, consumerist America. At the same time, he exhibits almost violent bursts of investment and pride in Catholic doctrine and culture that indicate the depth of his alienation in 1930s Los Angeles. Tracing this ebb and flow of investment in the sacred allows us to reach a more nuanced understanding of both the novel and the Italian diasporic experience in the United States.

How Hitler Nearly Destroyed the Great American Novel

Investigative journalist Holiday scrutinizes the archival record to clarify the collision of historical forces that long haunted the trajectory of Ask the Dust. Informed by primary research into the John Fante papers at UCLA Library Special Collections and beyond, this essay explains how in falling victim to political pressures of the Second World War, the novel gains significance that remains relevant to our own age today. Before Mussolini’s fascist censors targeted Fante’s writings, agents of Adolf Hitler were hijacking the attention of Fante’s editor and draining the assets of his publisher for releasing an unauthorized, unexpurgated edition of the dictator’s notorious Mein Kampf in a legal case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The issues involved in that case and their effects upon Ask the Dust teach us as much about Fante’s day and age as about our own era of alt-right provocateurship and #atnoplatform.

Prelude to “Prologue to Ask the Dust”

In this talk, delivered at the 2014 California State University, Long Beach, symposium celebrating the 75th anniversary of the publication of Ask the Dust, Cooper recounts the story of how he came to discover a remarkable letter, to that point unknown, written by John Fante in 1933. Addressed to fellow Italian American writer Jo Pagano, who like Fante had ventured west from Colorado to seek writing success in Los Angeles, the letter provides insight into the crippling doubts and frustrations that burdened the young Fante even as it reveals his deep-seated confidence that he would one day write a great novel. Published here for the first time, this letter prefigures another remarkable Fante letter, the one written in 1938 that is now known as the Prologue to Ask the Dust.

John Fante: The Passion That Became a Festival

The John Fante Festival “Il dio di mio padre” started in 2006 in Torricella Peligna, a small town in the Maiella mountains of Italy’s Abruzzo province, where John Fante’s father Nick Fante was born. After making a 2003 documentary film about John Fante, Giovanna Di Lello founded and still directs the festival, which is organized by the municipality. In this essay the author explains her passion for John Fante and how over the years the festival has become a reference point for Fante enthusiasts around the world, featuring numerous writers, musicians, artists, and scholars from Italy, the United States, and elsewhere who come to pay homage to Fante and his works through lectures, concerts, and readings.

Amid the Dust

“Amidst the Dust” pays homage to the author’s personal experience conducting research for her MA thesis on Italian-American writer John Fante. Her two months spent in Los Angeles—the city where Fante set many of his literary works—were crucial to developing a richer understanding of Fante’s perception of his identity as a son of Italian immigrants. The essay focuses on the trove of treasures archived in the John Fante papers at UCLA Library Special Collections, detailing daily encounters with manuscripts and personal notes, and reflecting on the nature of ethnic identity while drawing parallels between Fante’s experiences (and those of his characters) and her own journey.

Goodbye, Bunker Hill

Written soon after Ask the Dust appeared in late 1939, this little-known piece of non-fiction by John Fante appeared in the Los Angeles Times. In it, Fante reminisces about his early days in Los Angeles, those days in the early 1930s when he was young and broke and often hungry but filled with dreams of literary greatness. He presents a gallery of character sketches of the people he lived amidst, from the drunk who lived next door in Fante’s beloved Bunker Hill rooming house to the generous Japanese grocer at Grand Central Market. Filled with feeling for a lost time and cherished memories, this piece reveals a side of John Fante that will captivate readers who want to learn more about the author of Ask the Dust.