John Fante - The Book Club at IIC Celebrates the Italian American Writer
The Book Club at IIC Los Angeles is back! The first appointment for 2012 is a special one, as it will honor one of the greatest Italian-American writers of the 20th century: John Fante.
Known all over the world for the so called ‘Bandini Saga’, his talent started to be recognized only in the last years of his life, while in Italy his works have been rediscovered only in the 90’s.
Born in Denver, Colorado, on 8 April 1909 to Italian immigrants Mary and Nicola, John Fante's early years were spent in poverty and the anti-Italian prejudice of the time. He was equally familiar with starvation and poverty and only in the last years of his life he met the privileges of self-made wealth.
When Nick lost at cards, the family went without. Mother Mary scrimped to send their children to the local parish school. There, John showed enough promise to be admitted to Regis High, the Jesuit boarding school in Denver. After studying for a brief time at the University of Colorado, in 1930 John Fante moved to California, where he started writing.
Most of his novels and stories take place either in Colorado or California. Many of them also feature fictional incarnations of John's father, an unreliable and violent man. Many times in his life the author recalled him as “a beast.”
Fante’s works were a mirror to his personal experience. Indeed, recurring themes are poverty, Catholicism, family life, and Italian-American identity. After many unsuccessful attempts at publishing stories in the highly regarded literary magazine, The American Mercury, his short story ‘Altar Boy’ was accepted by the magazine's editor.
In 1936 Fante wrote the first chapter of the Bandini Saga: ‘The Road to Los Angeles’. Here he introduced the character that will serve as his alter ego in a total of four novels.
The novel was published only in 1985. The 1938 is the year of ‘Wait until Spring, Bandini’, followed by ‘Ask the Dust’ (1939). This last one is nowadays considered his masterpiece, and sixty years after it was published, it appeared for several weeks on the New York Times' Bestseller's List. But fame didn’t happen, not until 1952. Producer Stanley Kramer paid $40,000 for the rights to Fante’s new novel, ‘Full of Life’. Fante, together with his wife Joyce and their four children, moved to the ranch house Malibu.
There began the most flush period of his life. The comedy became a box-office hit starring Judy Holliday and Richard Conte, and earned for Fante a 1956 Writers’ Guild nomination for Best Written American Comedy.
The 1978 is the year that sees the new friendship between John Fante and Charles Bukowski. Bukowski once said Fante was ‘the best writer he had ever read’ and ‘the most damned narrator of America’. He also obtained Fante’s authorization to publish again ‘Ask the Dust’, for what he wrote a passionate introduction. So in the late 1970s, at the suggestion of novelist and poet, Black Sparrow Press began to republish the works of Fante, creating resurgence in his popularity.
In 1982 Fante completes ‘Dreams from Bunker Hill’, the last chapter of the Bandini Saga. The novel was dictated to his wife, Joyce; the writer was in fact affected by diabetes, which led him to blindness and paralysis towards the end of his life. John Fante died on May 8, 1983.
‘Ask the Dust’ has been referred to over the years as his best novel by many writers and critics, who also recognized Fante as one of the greatest contemporary writers. Too bad it took so long for the world to see his talent.
The Book Club at IIC is a chance to discover and deepen Fante’s works and career through readings from his books, video and conversations. Don’t miss the appointment on February 1st, 2012, at 6:30pm!
More info at www.iiclosangeles.esteri.it
Alessandra Mastroianni
contributor
