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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813 EAN: 9780060822552 ISBN: 0060822554 Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 192 Publication Date: February 01, 2006 Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Release Date: February 07, 2006 Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: This book is another sterling recommendation from the Saltzman workshop. The under-appreciated Fante's second outing details the adventures of his alterego, Arturo Bandini, as the struggling young writer tackles Los Angeles in the late 1930s. And take it from personal experience, tackling L.A. as a destitute young scribe some decades later isn't much different. In other words: Fante gets it right and sets it down in his Chianti-steak-and-potatoes style, with prose both simple and rich. This Black Sparrow edition has a bonus: Charles Bukowski's great preface on how Fante stacks up against writers that were at once more famous--and far more anemic. Product Description: Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Ask The Dust - John FanteAsk The Dust By John Fante provided an enjoyable escape from life in hte 21st century to the romantic, meanderings of a writer living in Los Angeles through the 1930s. Really, I was attracted to the book because of Bukowski's energetic intro and I was not disappointed. Ask the Dust (P.S.) Rating:  - I'm ambivalentNarrators with a touch of bipolarity give this reader trouble. On one page, they are superior, dismissive, and smug; on the next, they are hysterically dependent, remorseful, and wretched. As a reading experience, such narrators seem like artificial constructs where the voices are inconsistent and never quite come together. For this reason, I had trouble with A FAN'S NOTES, HUNGER, and ASK THE DUST. These books give the feeling the author never quite mastered the material. In AtD, this ... Read More Rating: - Great writing, decent storyFante was a predecessor of the beats, a major big influence on Charles Buchowski and Jack Kerouac. Although his writing is not as energized as Kerouac's, that they are of the same literary lineage is apparent. ASK THE DUST is a semi-autobiographical book, the first of four in which Fante uses Arturo Bandini as his alter-ego stand-in. It's set in 1930s Los Angeles, and could be called a prototypical L.A. story, populated with lost souls, big dreams and a scenery that is fantastic and haunted. ... Read More Rating: - Hell with HitlerAn excerpt that explains it all directly from the text, "To hell with that Hitler, this is more important than Hitler, this is about my book. It won't shake the world, it won't kill a soul, it won't fire a gun, ah, but you'll remember it to the day you die, you'll lie there breathing your last, and you'll smile as you remember the book. The story of Vera Rivken, a slice out of life." Rating: - Ask the DustJohn Fante's short novel,"Ask the Dust"(1939) is set in the Depression-ridden Los Angeles of the 1930s. It is a semiautobigraphical novel which tells the story of Arturo Bandini, an inexperienced 20-year old who aspires to be a writer. Bandini, the son of Italian immigrants, has left his home in Boulder, Colorado to pursue his dreams of writing in a shabby area of Los Angeles. When the novel begins, Bandini has had one story accepted for publication the "Little Dog Laughed" of which he is inordinately proud. ... Read More |
