by John Fante
My memories of Uncle Mingo are dimmed by the passage of time. I best remember when I was a small boy, my father recalling in glowing praise his heroic Uncle Mingo, who must have lived in Abruzzi in 1880 or thereabouts. My father said that Uncle Mingo was loyal to the king at that time and was hanged by the other side. In Full of Life I describe my father telling me this wondrous memory of his uncle. I have no copies of Full of Life to send you but if I should come across one shall send it on to you. Eventually all of my works will be republished by Black Sparrow Press, and made available in bookstores. Thank you for your very kind letter.
Sincerely yours,
John Fante
{To his aunt Dorothy Shearer, in Paradise, California}
25 SEPTEMBER 1981
Dear Aunt Dorothy:
How did you arrive in Paradise? Did you spend very much time in purgatory? I wonder if you ran into my father. I am certain that he spent at least 25 years in purgatory, and may be in Heaven at this time. I was very sorry to read of your eye problems, but I hasten to say that I too am now blind, after the ravages of diabetes and glaucoma. I have also lost the use of my legs through double amputation, thus I cannot see nor walk, and spend all of my time either in a wheelchair or in bed. Not that I am complaining. On the contrary I’m whining and angry and annoyed and humiliated by my present station in life, but I do have some of the comforts of the living. I have my dear wife Joyce who is taking down this dictation, as well as my four children—my son Nick, 39, Daniel 37, Victoria 31, and Jimmy 30. I have a number of grandchildren, some of whom visit me frequently.
As for myself I am twenty-six years old, take 26 units of insulin every day, and spend a lot of time listening to the radio. I also write novels. In the order of the their appearance my novels include Wait Until Spring, Bandini, The Brotherhood of the Grape, and Dreams From Bunker Hill. All of these works are being reprinted by Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara. I have a few copies of my own, but I need them in my work.
My sons Nick and Jim are engineers in a technology plant in Santa Monica. Both of them are extremely successful and make a lot of money. My son Dan is bright and courageous and one day he will definitely succeed. My daughter Victoria is divorced and the mother of two boys. She is a moody beautiful girl of great passion and style. All of us adore her.
Finally I must not forget Willy and Ginger, my dogs. They have scads of fleas, but they worship me. I accept them, fleas and all.
Last but not least is the woman who brought all of this on—all of my problems, my travail, my bitterness, my true love, my dear and beautiful wife, who is without shame, a born hussy, who mistreats me, reviles me, and loves me in return. We are truly an odd couple, bumping into one another from time to time, cursing one another, and quarreling day and night—but love we never lack, and the moment our quarreling ceases we are in one another’s arms again. It’s a hard life, but I can’t think of any other that suits me so well.
It was good to learn of Ralph and Arthur. Give them my love. My best to your husband.
Your nephew,
John
John Fante died at the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, California on May 8, 1983. He was seventy-four years old.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fante, John. Ask the Dust. New York: Stackpole Sons, 1939. Bantam paperback edition, 1954. Reprint, Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1980.
— The Big Hunger: Stories 1932–1959. Ed. Stephen Cooper. Santa Rosa: Black SparrowPress, 2000.
— and Rudolph Borchert. Bravo, Burro! Illustrated by Marilyn Hirsh. New York: HawthornBooks, 1970.
— The Brotherhood of the Grape. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Reprint, Santa Rosa:Black Sparrow Press, 1988.
— Dago Red. New York: The Viking Press, 1940.
— Dreams from Bunker Hill. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1982.
— John Fante & H. L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence 1930–1952. Ed. Michael Moreau and consulting ed. Joyce Fante. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1989.
— John Fante: Selected Letters 1932–1981. Ed. Seamus Cooney. Santa Rosa: Black SparrowPress, 1991.
— Full of Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952. Bantam paperback edition, 1953. Reprint, Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1988.
— 1933 Was a Bad Year. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1991.
— Prologue to Ask the Dust. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
— The Road to Los Angeles. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1985.
— Wait Until Spring, Bandini. New York: Stackpole Sons, 1938. Reprint, Santa Barbara:Black Sparrow Press, 1983.
— West of Rome. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1986.
— The Wine of Youth: Selected Stories. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1983.
SELECTED SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collins, Richard. John Fante: A Literary Portrait. Toronto: Guernica, 2000.
Cooper, Stephen. Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante. New York: North Point Press, 2000.
— “John Fante’s Eternal City.” In Los Angeles in Fiction, revised ed. Ed. David Fine. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. 83–99.
— “Madness and Writing in the Works of Hamsun, Fante and Bukowski.” Genre 19 (1998): 19–27.
— and David Fine, eds. John Fante: A Critical Gathering. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
Gordon, Neil. “Shanghaied in Tinseltown.” Salon.com (May 12, 2000).
Kordich, Catherine J. John Fante: His Novels and Novellas. New York: Twayne, 2000.
Ulin, David L. “Back from the Dust.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (May 14, 1995): 9.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The material in this reader is reprinted from the following books published by Ecco: Ask the Dust (1939, 1980), Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982), Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938, 1983), The Wine of Youth: Selected Stories of John Fante (1985), The Road to Los Angeles (1985), 1933 Was a Bad Year (1985), West of Rome (1986), Full of Life (1952, 1988), The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977, 1988), John Fante & H. L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence (1989), Selected Letters: 1932–1981 (1991), and The Big Hunger: Stories 1932–1959 (2000). Warmest thanks to Joyce Fante for permission to print a number of previously unpublished letters.
About the Author
JOHN FANTE was born in Colorado in 1909. He attended parochial school in Boulder and Regis High School, a Jesuit boarding school. He also attended the University of Colorado and Long Beach City College.
Fante began writing in 1929 and published his first short story in The American Mercury in 1932. He published numerous stories in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Mercury, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Esquire, and Harper’s Bazaar. His first novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini was published in 1938. The following year Ask the Dust appeared, and in 1940 a collection of his short stories, Dago Red, was published and is now collected in The Wine of Youth.
Meanwhile, Fante had been occupied extensively in screenwriting. Some of his credits include Full of Life, Jeanne Eagels, My Man and I, The Reluctant Saint, Something for a Lonely Man, My Six Loves, and Walk on the Wild Side.
John Fante was stricken with diabetes in 1955 and its complications brought about his blindness in 1978, but he continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce, and the result was Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). He died at the age of seventy-four on May 8, 1983.
STEPHEN COOPER is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante. While researching Fante’s life he discovered and edited the manuscript for Fante’s last book, The Big Hunger. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their two children.
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PRAISE FOR The John Fante Reader
“Because so much of Fante’s writing was furiously egocentric, Mr. Cooper has been able to give this anthology the engrossing air of an autobiography. The names of Fante�
��s stand-ins change, but their brooding and posturing endure through a series of novels, stories and letters.”
—New York, Times
“Allows us to see the world through the eyes of a man who was wholly free of sentiment and self-deception and yet who was fascinated by his own origins and afire with his own passions.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Fante was my god …”
—Charles Bukowski
“John Fante was a wonderfully engaging American writer whose work today is too little known. This reader is very welcome—one hopes it will go some way toward bringing John Fante to readers who otherwise would have missed him.”
—Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show
“The revival of John Fante testifies to his timeless talent. … [He was] a man who described the dim light of the American dream in Hollywood and wrote about it vividly and enduringly, as these excerpts from his work show us. … A major talent in his time, more than a half-century ago, his time is now here again.”
—Gay Talese
PRAISE FOR Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante
“Those lucky souls whom this sad, lusty biography sends to his novels have a revelation in store.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A wonderful introduction to a great American writer.”
—John Turturro
“Sensitive and well-researched … [this] biography will spur readers to seek out [Fante’s] unique novels, such as Ask the Dust … his is a life story compelling to read about.”
—Booklist
written by STEPHEN COOPER
Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante
edited by STEPHEN COOPER
The Big Hunger: Stories 1932–1959 by John Fante
John Fante: A Critical Gathering (with David Fine)
Perspectives on John Huston
Copyright
THE JOHN FANTE READER. Copyright © 2002 by Joyce Fante.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03680-3
FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2003
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Fante, John.
The John Fante reader / edited by Stephen Cooper.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-06-018496-5
The United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Correspondence. 3. Screenwriters—United States—Correspondence. 4. Fante, John, 1909—Correspondence. I. Cooper, Stephen, 1949- II. Title.
PS3511.A594 A6 2002
813’.52—dc21
2001044182
ISBN 0-06-095948-7 (pbk.)
03 04 05 06 QW 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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