Writing in the Dust

In this elegant and insightful piece of literary journalism, Alan Rifkin offers a sweeping account of how John Fante’s Ask the Dust has come to be a touchstone among contemporary writers in Los Angeles and southern California and a wellspring of the region’s literature. Combining his own personal journey as a writer of fiction and non-fiction with a survey of the works of such authors as Steve Erickson, Carolyn See, Joan Didion, Salvador Plascencia, Kate Braverman, and others, Rifkin traces a line connecting all of them to Fante’s signature work and its dreamlike image of the metropolis: “Every Los Angeles writer at the outskirts of vision feels a connection to Ask the Dust, the 1939 novel that, more than any other, seems to weep over this city’s corpse in the ecstasy of possessing it.”

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.

Watch Out or You’ll Wind Up in My Novel: The Lost World of Ask the Dust

This essay analyzes the influence of John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust on recent works of fiction such as Noah Van Sciver's 2015 graphic novel Fante Bukowski. It also explores the influence of such Fante's predecessors as James Branch Cabell, author of Jurgen, on Fante's own fiction, focusing particularly on Fante’s early short story “To Be a Monstrous Fellow.” Key authors of Los Angeles fiction, from L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz) to Steve Erickson (Days Between Stations), are juxtaposed with Fante and his unique literary interpretation of southern California as presented in Ask the Dust.

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.

“A Ramona in Reverse”: Writing the Madness of the Spanish Past in Ask the Dust

At the turn of the twentieth century, real estate boosters seeking to promote southern California drew upon the national popularity of Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel Ramona, in particular its fantasy of the Spanish past. The fantasy’s colonial discourse deployed stereotypes marked by an ambivalence that romanticized “going Spanish” even as it portrayed Mexican communities as burdens necessitating subjugation through various strategies including repatriation. John Fante’s Ask the Dust (1939) repudiates the stereotype of the colonial fantasy by critically mimicking the Spanish past. By reversing the discourse of Ramona, Ask the Dust exposes the imperialist nostalgia of the fantasy, recognizes the instability of the regional sense of colonial authority, protests the racial injustice of the discourse, and recuperates the voice of the Other that the fantasy seeks to silence.

Letters from Los Angeles

In this series of letters written to a friend back home in the Netherlands, Dutch filmmaker Jan Louter describes the time he spent in Los Angeles making his 2001 documentary A Sad Flower in the Sand. Equal parts meditation on Ask the Dust and impressionistic travelogue throughout the city and as far afield as the Mojave Desert, the letters give voice to Louter’s deep appreciation of John Fante’s art. Rich with sketches of such other important people in the Fante orbit as John’s wife Joyce, their son Dan Fante, and screenwriter Robert Towne, the writing in these letters conveys a penetrating European perspective on Fante’s masterpiece and a profound sympathy for its wounded author.

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.

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.

From Family to Institutional Memory: A Conversation with Stephen Cooper

This conversation with Fante’s biographer revolves around the complex acquisition trajectory of John Fante’s papers (manuscripts, letters, business records) and memorabilia (his typewriter, a lock of hair, etc.). Their transfer in 2009 from the writer’s family to the institutional space of UCLA Library Special Collections represented Fante’s entry into that very world of immortality he had unabashedly pined for, along with his literary alter ego Arturo Bandini. The conversation contributes to the debates on archives as repositories of past and future knowledge and on private versus public memory.

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.