Investigative journalist Holiday scrutinizes the archival record to clarify the collision of historical forces that long haunted the trajectory of Ask the Dust. Informed by primary research into the John Fante papers at UCLA Library Special Collections and beyond, this essay explains how in falling victim to political pressures of the Second World War, the novel gains significance that remains relevant to our own age today. Before Mussolini’s fascist censors targeted Fante’s writings, agents of Adolf Hitler were hijacking the attention of Fante’s editor and draining the assets of his publisher for releasing an unauthorized, unexpurgated edition of the dictator’s notorious Mein Kampf in a legal case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The issues involved in that case and their effects upon Ask the Dust teach us as much about Fante’s day and age as about our own era of alt-right provocateurship and #atnoplatform.
{"title":"How Hitler nearly destroyed the great American novel","authors":"Ryan Holiday","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.16","url":null,"abstract":"Investigative journalist Holiday scrutinizes the archival record to clarify the collision of historical forces that long haunted the trajectory of Ask the Dust. Informed by primary research into the John Fante papers at UCLA Library Special Collections and beyond, this essay explains how in falling victim to political pressures of the Second World War, the novel gains significance that remains relevant to our own age today. Before Mussolini’s fascist censors targeted Fante’s writings, agents of Adolf Hitler were hijacking the attention of Fante’s editor and draining the assets of his publisher for releasing an unauthorized, unexpurgated edition of the dictator’s notorious Mein Kampf in a legal case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The issues involved in that case and their effects upon Ask the Dust teach us as much about Fante’s day and age as about our own era of alt-right provocateurship and #atnoplatform.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129059523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"List of Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.25","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115609398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-07DOI: 10.5422/FORDHAM/9780823287864.003.0017
J. Fante, Charles J. Bukowski
This chapter reproduces two letters, first the one that John Fante sent to Charles Bukowski in January 1979 thanking him in advance for agreeing to write a preface to the forthcoming reissue of Ask the Dust by Black Sparrow Press, and then the one that Bukowski sent Fante in response the following month. The letters are followed by the original typescript of Bukowski’s now-famous Preface, which helped revive Fante’s novel after four decades in out-of-print oblivion.
{"title":"“My dear bukowski,” “hello john fante”: preface to ask the dust","authors":"J. Fante, Charles J. Bukowski","doi":"10.5422/FORDHAM/9780823287864.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5422/FORDHAM/9780823287864.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter reproduces two letters, first the one that John Fante sent to Charles Bukowski in January 1979 thanking him in advance for agreeing to write a preface to the forthcoming reissue of Ask the Dust by Black Sparrow Press, and then the one that Bukowski sent Fante in response the following month. The letters are followed by the original typescript of Bukowski’s now-famous Preface, which helped revive Fante’s novel after four decades in out-of-print oblivion.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126144707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this series of letters written to a friend back home in the Netherlands, Dutch filmmaker Jan Louter describes the time he spent in Los Angeles making his 2001 documentary A Sad Flower in the Sand. Equal parts meditation on Ask the Dust and impressionistic travelogue throughout the city and as far afield as the Mojave Desert, the letters give voice to Louter’s deep appreciation of John Fante’s art. Rich with sketches of such other important people in the Fante orbit as John’s wife Joyce, their son Dan Fante, and screenwriter Robert Towne, the writing in these letters conveys a penetrating European perspective on Fante’s masterpiece and a profound sympathy for its wounded author.
{"title":"Letters from los angeles","authors":"Jan Louter","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.18","url":null,"abstract":"In this series of letters written to a friend back home in the Netherlands, Dutch filmmaker Jan Louter describes the time he spent in Los Angeles making his 2001 documentary A Sad Flower in the Sand. Equal parts meditation on Ask the Dust and impressionistic travelogue throughout the city and as far afield as the Mojave Desert, the letters give voice to Louter’s deep appreciation of John Fante’s art. Rich with sketches of such other important people in the Fante orbit as John’s wife Joyce, their son Dan Fante, and screenwriter Robert Towne, the writing in these letters conveys a penetrating European perspective on Fante’s masterpiece and a profound sympathy for its wounded author.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133181059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Family to Institutional Memory:","authors":"Teresa Fiore","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.20","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120905724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-07DOI: 10.5422/FORDHAM/9780823287864.003.0018
Teresa Fiore
This conversation with Fante’s biographer revolves around the complex acquisition trajectory of John Fante’s papers (manuscripts, letters, business records) and memorabilia (his typewriter, a lock of hair, etc.). Their transfer in 2009 from the writer’s family to the institutional space of UCLA Library Special Collections represented Fante’s entry into that very world of immortality he had unabashedly pined for, along with his literary alter ego Arturo Bandini. The conversation contributes to the debates on archives as repositories of past and future knowledge and on private versus public memory.
{"title":"From family to institutional memory: a conversation with Stephen cooper","authors":"Teresa Fiore","doi":"10.5422/FORDHAM/9780823287864.003.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5422/FORDHAM/9780823287864.003.0018","url":null,"abstract":"This conversation with Fante’s biographer revolves around the complex acquisition trajectory of John Fante’s papers (manuscripts, letters, business records) and memorabilia (his typewriter, a lock of hair, etc.). Their transfer in 2009 from the writer’s family to the institutional space of UCLA Library Special Collections represented Fante’s entry into that very world of immortality he had unabashedly pined for, along with his literary alter ego Arturo Bandini. The conversation contributes to the debates on archives as repositories of past and future knowledge and on private versus public memory.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121106474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Originally offered as the 2011 Endowed Bonnie Cashin Memorial Lecture at UCLA Library Special Collections, this talk consists of two parts: an overview of John Fante’s life and times, and a behind-the-scenes account of the work Cooper did in researching his biography of Fante. Confiding to his audience that any biography is to some degree autobiographical, Cooper tells of his own youthful infatuation with Ask the Dust and how that feeling developed into the central project of his professional life both as a writer and a teacher. The revised version of the talk that is presented here leads up to the disclosure of a mystery surrounding the John Fante papers, a mystery that persists to this day.
{"title":"The road to john fante’s los angeles","authors":"Stephen Cooper","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.23","url":null,"abstract":"Originally offered as the 2011 Endowed Bonnie Cashin Memorial Lecture at UCLA Library Special Collections, this talk consists of two parts: an overview of John Fante’s life and times, and a behind-the-scenes account of the work Cooper did in researching his biography of Fante. Confiding to his audience that any biography is to some degree autobiographical, Cooper tells of his own youthful infatuation with Ask the Dust and how that feeling developed into the central project of his professional life both as a writer and a teacher. The revised version of the talk that is presented here leads up to the disclosure of a mystery surrounding the John Fante papers, a mystery that persists to this day.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115862794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay analyzes the influence of John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust on recent works of fiction such as Noah Van Sciver's 2015 graphic novel Fante Bukowski. It also explores the influence of such Fante's predecessors as James Branch Cabell, author of Jurgen, on Fante's own fiction, focusing particularly on Fante’s early short story “To Be a Monstrous Fellow.” Key authors of Los Angeles fiction, from L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz) to Steve Erickson (Days Between Stations), are juxtaposed with Fante and his unique literary interpretation of southern California as presented in Ask the Dust.
{"title":"Watch out or you’ll wind up in my novel: the lost world of ask the dust","authors":"Robert A. Guffey","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.10","url":null,"abstract":"This essay analyzes the influence of John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust on recent works of fiction such as Noah Van Sciver's 2015 graphic novel Fante Bukowski. It also explores the influence of such Fante's predecessors as James Branch Cabell, author of Jurgen, on Fante's own fiction, focusing particularly on Fante’s early short story “To Be a Monstrous Fellow.” Key authors of Los Angeles fiction, from L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz) to Steve Erickson (Days Between Stations), are juxtaposed with Fante and his unique literary interpretation of southern California as presented in Ask the Dust.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131902248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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.
{"title":"Don’t ask the french","authors":"P. Garnier","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.11","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123701495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this interview, legendary Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne explains how discovering Ask the Dust influenced his writing. The novel’s depiction of 1930s Los Angeles and the era-specific dialogue of its characters helped inform his writing of the Academy Award-winning screenplay for Chinatown (1974). Wishing to go on and adapt Ask the Dust to the screen—a process that would end up taking decades—the young Towne sought out the novel’s aging, ill, and irascible Fante, earning a hard-won friendship that in his own advancing years Towne recalls with affection.
{"title":"Interview with Robert Towne","authors":"N. Rabin","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv102bj6q.17","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview, legendary Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne explains how discovering Ask the Dust influenced his writing. The novel’s depiction of 1930s Los Angeles and the era-specific dialogue of its characters helped inform his writing of the Academy Award-winning screenplay for Chinatown (1974). Wishing to go on and adapt Ask the Dust to the screen—a process that would end up taking decades—the young Towne sought out the novel’s aging, ill, and irascible Fante, earning a hard-won friendship that in his own advancing years Towne recalls with affection.","PeriodicalId":347092,"journal":{"name":"John Fante's Ask the Dust","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114831511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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