Don’t ask the french

Abstract

This is a personal account by someone who witnessed firsthand, and himself had a hand in, John Fante's extraordinary popularity in France in the late 1980s. Before being rediscovered by Charles Bukowski and Black Sparrow Press, Fante’s neglect in his own country for over forty years had a lot to do with French enthusiasm for his work. Identification with Fante's alter ego Bandini was instrumental as well, but a rather similar character (a struggling and starving young artist) in another, earlier, novel which had an undeniable influence on Ask the Dust—Knut Hamsun's Hunger—never stirred as big an emotional response with the French, possibly because Hamsun was extremely well-known not only in his own country but also everywhere else in Europe. The French never like success, but instead love to embrace artists they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as maudits—doomed to oblivion at home.