Ask the Dust by John Fante

Ask the Dust by John Fante

"Either the work of John Fante is unknown to you or unforgettable. He was not the kind of writer to leave room in between." -- New York Times

"Fante was my God."--Charles Bukowski

John Fante's classic California novel details the adventures of his alter ego, Arturo Bandini, a young writer in Great Depression-era Los Angeles. Struggling to succeed, Bandini falls into an obsessive love affair with the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Yet just as fortune looms with the publication of his first novel, everything falls apart when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears--propelling Bandini to reject the writer's life.

John Fante began writing in 1929, and his first short tale was published in 1932. Wait Till Spring, Bandini, his debut novel, was published in 1938 and is the first in the Arturo Bandini series, which also includes The Journey to Los Angeles and Ask the Dust. In 1955, he was diagnosed with diabetes after a long career as a screenwriter. In 1978, complications from the condition resulted in his blindness and, two years later, the amputation of both legs. In 1982, he released Dreams from Bunker Hill, the concluding volume of the Arturo Bandini series, by dictation to his wife, Joyce. At the age of seventy-four, he died on May 8, 1983.