The John Fante Square
On April 8 of this year, Los Angeles Councilwoman Jan Perry gathered with literary activists Kim Cooper and Richard Schave to officially name the corner of 5th Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles “John Fante Square.” Fante, the author of “Ask the Dust” and other novels, started his life as a writer much like his best-known protagonist, Arturo Bandini – down on his heels in the cheap rentals on Bunker Hill.
Although much of the old Bunker Hill was razed in the 1960s for urban development, the corner of 5th and Grand, a block from Pershing Square, bears a vague resemblance to the streets Fante once walked. “Los Angeles, give me some of your!” Fante wrote in “Ask the Dust.”
“Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.” Fante found success writing screenplays and moved west to a home by the beach. But he’s best remembered as a chronicler of downtown, it’s unloved and overlooked residents, its dirty sidewalks and cheap bars. Born in Denver, Colorado, Fante's early years were spent in relative poverty.
The son of an Italian father, Nicola Fante, and an Italian-American mother, Mary Capolungo, Fante was educated in various Catholic schools in Boulder, Colorado and briefly attended the University of Colorado. In 1929, he dropped out of college and moved to Southern California to concentrate on his writing. He lived and worked in Wilmington, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, the Bunker Hill district of downtown Los Angeles, California, various resi- dences in Hollywood and Echo Park, and Malibu.
In 1955 Fante developed diabetes, which eventually blinded him and two years later he would have his legs amputated. He continued to write by dictating the stories to his wife. After many unsuccessful attempts at publishing stories in the highly regarded literary magazine, The American Mercury, his short story "Altar Boy" was accepted conditionally by the magazine's editor, H.L. Mencken.
The acceptance of "Altar Boy" by The American Mercury was accompanied by a reply from Mencken that read: "Dear Mr. Fante, What do you have against a typewriter? If you transcribe this manuscript in type I'll be glad to buy it. Sincerely yours, H.L. Mencken." By far, his most popular novel is the semi-autobiographical Ask the Dust, the second book in what is now referred to as "The Saga of Arturo Bandini" or "The Bandini Quartet".
Bandini served as his alter ego in a total of four novels: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), The Road to Los Angeles (chronologically, this is the first novel Fante wrote but it was unpublished until 1985), Ask the Dust (1939), and finally Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982), which was dictated to his wife, Joyce, towards the end of his life. Fante's use of Bandini as his alter ego can be compared to Charles Bukowski's character, Henry Chinaski.
Bukowski was heavily influenced by John Fante. Other novels include Full of Life (1952), The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977), and 1933 Was a Bad Year (1985; incomplete). Two novellas, 'My Dog Stupid' and 'The Orgy' were published in 1986 under the title West of Rome. His short story collection, Dago Red, was originally published in 1940, and then republished with a few additional stories in 1985 under the title The Wine of Youth.
Recurring themes in Fante's work are poverty, Catholicism, family life, Italian-American identity, sports, and the writing life. Ask the Dust has been referred to over the years as a monumental Southern California /Los Angeles novel by a host of reputable sources (e.g.: Carey McWilliams, Charles Bukowski, and The Los Angeles Times Book Review). More than sixty years after it was published, Ask the Dust appeared for several weeks on the New York Times' Bestseller's List. Fante's clear voice, vivid characters, shoot- from-the-hip style, and painful, emotional honesty blended with humor and scrupulous self-criticism lends his books to wide appreciation.
Most of his novels and stories take place either in Colorado or California. Many of his novels and short stories also feature or focus on fictional incarnations of Fante's father, Nick Fante, as a cantankerous wine tippling, cigar stub-smoking bricklayer. Fante's screenwriting credits include the comedy-drama Full of Life (1957), based on his novel of the same name, which starred Judy Holliday and Richard Conte, and was nominated for Best Written American Comedy at the 1957 WGA Awards.
He also co-wrote Walk on the Wild Side (1962), which stars Jane Fonda in her first credited film role, based on the novel by Nelson Algren. His other screenplay credits include Dinky, Jeanne Eagels, My Man and I, The Reluctant Saint, Something for a Lonely Man and Six Loves. As Fante himself often admitted, most of what he wrote for the screen was simply hackwork intended to bring in a paycheck, In the late 1970s, at the suggestion of novelist and poet Charles Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press began to republish the (then out-of-print) works of Fante, creating a resurgence in his popularity.
When Black Sparrow was reconfigured on its founder's retirement in 2002, publication of John Fante's works was taken over by HarperCollins under the Ecco imprint, but not before Black Sparrow Press could publish the last of Fante's uncollected stories in The Big Hunger (2000). Full of Life: The Biography of John Fante was published by Stephen Cooper also in 2000, followed by The Fante Reader in 2003. Also available are two collections of letters, Fante/Mencken: A Personal Correspondence (1989) and Selected Letters (1991).
