It's not every day that a writer, almost unheard of in his lifetime, reemerges twenty years after his death as a voice of his generation. But then again, there aren't many writers with such irrepressible genius as John Fante.
Born in Denver in 1909, Fante grew up in an Italian American family that was plagued by the prejudice and poverty so common among working-class immigrants of the time. But Fante's unflinching eye was meant for the City of Angels, and at age twenty-one he moved west to the town that would become his lifelong home. In semiautobiographical novels like The Road to Los Angeles, Dreams from Bunker Hill, and Ask the Dust -- his most acclaimed work -- Fante captured the rhythms of Los Angeles life in prose that spans the gap between the spare style of Hemingway and the gritty urban dialect of the Beats.
The John Fante Reader is the important next step in the reintroduction of this influential literary writer to modern audiences. Combining excerpts from his novels and stories, as well as his never-before-published letters, this collection is the perfect primer on the work of a writer, underappreciated in his time, who is finalty taking his place in the pantheon of twentieth-century American writers.

The John Fante Reader

Literature & Fiction

John Fante

United States

William Morrow

Henry Molise, a 50 year old, successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his aging parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, brick laying father, Nick, though weak and alcoholic, can still strike fear into the hearts of his sons. His mother, though ill and devout to her Catholicism, still has the power to comfort and confuse her children. This is typical of Fante's novels, it's autobiographical, and brimming with love, death, violence and religion. Writing with great passion Fante powerfully hits home the damage family can wreck upon us all.

The Brotherhood of the Grape

Houghton/Mifflin

MINOR WRINKLES ON COVER. BOOKSTORE STAMP. INITIAL ON CORNER OF FIRST PAGE.

Bantam, USA

Ask the Dust (Panther Books)

Contemporary

GRAFTON

This new edition of the legendary Dago Red, first published in 1940, contains seven new stories, including "A Nun No More" and "My Father’s God."

Wine of Youth

Short Stories & Anthologies

Paladin

Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include companion materials, may have some shelf wear, may contain highlighting/notes, may not include CDs or access codes. 100% money back guarantee.

Ask the Dust

Canongate

Fiction. John Fante was born in Colorado in 1909 and began writing in 1929. He published numerous short stories, novels and screenplays in the following decades. ASK THE DUST, a coming-of-age novel set in Los Angeles, was first published in 1939. Says Charles Bukowski, in the preface to ASK THE DUST, of his first encounter with Fante's work, "Then one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity ... that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me." John Fante died in 1983.

Black Sparrow Press

Arturo Bandini rises from busboy to successful Hollywood screenwriter, but finds that he still is not satisfied with his life.

Dreams from Bunker Hill

In 1979 John Fante told an interviewer, "I would have done anything to get the praise of H.L. Mencken." This collection of letters spans a twenty-two year period that saw Fante go from a sporadically published short-story writer to a full-fledged novelist and screenwriter. Mencken, who was editor of the American Mercury and an influential social critic of the time, provides a sharp, dry contrast to Fante's effusiveness. The letters begin with short but polite rejections from Mencken of Fante's stories. Fante's letters, in turn, become more profuse in their praise of Mencken and his work; but more interestingly, they reveal the thoughts that were to become the grist of his novels. Particularly telling is a letter written in 1936 in which Fante describes his father's fawning reaction to his son's success, something Fante couldn't bear. "He used to beat the hell out of me twice a week and I had a lot of respect for the man," Fante laments. Mencken's response is short, almost curt: "I see no reason why you should be upset about your father." With the aid of copious endnotes, the letters also serve as a finger on the political pulse of the times. The letters ceased for most of the 1940s, and Mencken's debilitating health rendered the correspondence one-sided through the remainder of the 1950s. Nevertheless, the correspondence testifies to the progression of Fante's success as a writer and to his "friendship" with a mentor he never met, and it reveals a certain vulnerability in both men. -- From Independent Publisher

John Fante and H.L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence, 1930-1952

H.L.Mencken

Biographies & Memoirs

Black Sparrow Pr

Wait Until Spring Bandini

Canongate Canons

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by John Fante. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by John Fante

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by John Fante. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The John Fante Reader

The Brotherhood of the Grape

The Brotherhood of the Grape

Ask the Dust (Panther Books)

Wine of Youth

Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust

Dreams from Bunker Hill

John Fante and H.L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence, 1930-1952

Wait Until Spring Bandini