John Fante's Ask the Dust
A Joining of Voices and Views
This book can be opened with
Note on our eBooks: you can read our eBooks (ePUB or PDF) on the free Fordham Books app on iOS, Android, and desktop. To purchase a digital book you will need to create an account if you don’t already have one. After purchasing you will receive instructions on how to get started.
This volume assembles for the first time a staggering multiplicity of reflections and readings of John Fante’s 1939 classic, Ask the Dust, a true testament to the work’s present and future impact.
The contributors to this work—writers, critics, fans, scholars, screenwriters, directors, and others—analyze the provocative set of diaspora tensions informing Fante’s masterpiece that distinguish it from those accounts of earlier East Coast migrations and minglings. A must-read for aficionados of L.A. fiction and new migration literature, John Fante’s “Ask the Dust”: A Joining of Voices and Views is destined for landmark status as the first volume of Fante studies to reveal the novel’s evolving intertextualities and intersectionalities.
Contributors: Miriam Amico, Charles Bukowski, Stephen Cooper, Giovanna DiLello, John Fante, Valerio Ferme, Teresa Fiore, Daniel Gardner, Philippe Garnier, Robert Guffey, Ryan Holiday, Jan Louter, Chiara Mazzucchelli, Meagan Meylor, J’aime Morrison, Nathan Rabin, Alan Rifkin, Suzanne Manizza Roszak, Danny Shain, Robert Towne, Joel Williams
A decisive contribution to the critical understanding and (re)assessment of John Fante’s Ask the Dust, a novel that, while appreciated by many, has never really made it into the canon. These essays effectively demonstrate the theoretical and thematic currency of the novel for today’s critics and scholars, promising to become a landmark in the landscape of Fante scholarship.---Donatella Izzo, Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
John Fante’s Ask the Dust communicates the importance of the novel by giving space to both scholarly essays and nonacademic testimonies, which investigate the role the book has played in the development of the authors here gathered. Rather than a thorough work of academic inquiry, the present volume is therefore an homage to the writer, as the editors themselves declare.---Iperstoria
John Fante's 'Ask the Dust' confirms the extent to which Fante’s work has influenced and inspired the work of so many others through the decades and to this day. He does belong on the big bookshelf of accomplished American authors, neatly tucked in before Faulkner and followed by the likes of Fitzgerald and Frost.---Enthymema
Stephen Cooper is Professor of English, California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante (Angel City Press, 2005).
Clorinda Donato (Edited By)
Clorinda Donato is the George L. Graziadio Chair of Italian Studies at California State University, Long Beach. She co-wrote The “Encyclopédie Méthodique” in Spain.
Introduction | 1
1. New Approaches to John Fante’s Ask the Dust
From the Particular to the Universal: Vittorini’s Italian
Adaptation of Ask the Dust | 15
Valerio Ferme
When Spirituality Ebbs and Flows: Religion and Diasporic
Alienation in Ask the Dust | 43
Suzanne Manizza Roszak
“Sad Flower in the Sand”: Camilla Lopez and the Erasure
of Memory in Ask the Dust | 58
Meagan Meylor
“A Ramona in Reverse”: Writing the Madness of the Spanish
Past in Ask the Dust | 83
Daniel Gardner
2. Sibling Arts: Ask the Dust in Dance, Music,
the Graphic Novel, and French
Dancing with the Dust: Translating Ask the Dust to the Stage | 111
J’aime Morrison
Ask the Lyrics: John Fante in Music | 127
Chiara Mazzucchelli
Watch Out or You’ll End up in My Novel: The Lost World
of Ask the Dust | 145
Robert Guffey
Don’t Ask the French | 157
Philippe Garnier
3. Ask the Dust and Its Effects: Readers and Writers Respond
Amid the Dust | 167
Miriam Amico
The Passion That Became a Festival | 177
Giovanna DiLello
I Had Bandini: Reading Ask the Dust in Prison | 193
Joel Williams
Writing in the Dust | 201
Alan Rifkin
How Hitler Nearly Destroyed the Great American Novel | 213
Ryan Holiday
4. Ask the Dust and Its Due: Two Filmmakers and Bukowski Pay Tribute
Interview with Robert Towne | 237
Nathan Rabin
Letters from Los Angeles | 245
Jan Louter
“My Dear Bukowski,” “Hello John Fante”: Preface to Ask the Dust | 261
John Fante and Charles Bukowski
5. The Attic, the Archive, and Beyond
From Family to Institutional Memory: A Conversation
with Stephen Cooper | 273
Teresa Fiore
Prelude to “Prologue to Ask the Dust” | 281
Stephen Cooper
Goodbye, Bunker Hill | 290
John Fante
The Road to John Fante’s Los Angeles | 296
Stephen Cooper
Acknowledgments | 315
List of Contributors | 319
Bibliography | 325
Index | 331
