Ask the Dust

This article is about the novel. For the film, see Ask the Dust (film).

Ask the Dust

Author	John Fante
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	1939
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-082255-4
OCLC	63537603

Ask the Dust is the most popular novel of Italian-American author John Fante, first published in 1939 and set during the Great Depression-era in Los Angeles. It is one of a series of novels featuring the character Arturo Bandini as Fante's alter ego, a young Italian-American from Colorado struggling to make it as a writer in Los Angeles. The book is a roman à clef, much of it rooted in autobiographical incidents in Fante's life. The novel influenced Charles Bukowski significantly. In 2006, screenwriter Robert Towne adapted the novel into a film Ask the Dust.

Novel

Fante's most popular novel by far, the semi-autobiographical Ask the Dust is the second book in what is now referred to as "The Saga of Arturo Bandini" or "The Bandini Quartet". Bandini served as his alter ego in a total of four novels: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), The Road to Los Angeles (chronologically, this is the first novel Fante wrote but it was unpublished until 1985), Ask the Dust (1939), and finally Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). The last was dictated to his wife, Joyce, towards the end of his life. Fante's use of Bandini as his alter ego can be compared to Charles Bukowski's character, Henry Chinaski.

Recurring themes in Fante's works are poverty, Catholicism, family life, Italian-American identity, sports, and the writing life. Ask the Dust has been referred to over the years as a monumental Southern California/Los Angeles novel by many (e.g.: Carey McWilliams, Charles Bukowski, and The Los Angeles Times Book Review). More than sixty years after it was published, Ask the Dust appeared for several weeks on the New York Times' Bestseller's List.

Synopsis

Arturo Bandini is a struggling writer living in a residential hotel in Bunker Hill, a rundown section of Downtown Los Angeles. Living off the zest of oranges, he unconsciously creates a picture of Los Angeles as a modern dystopia during the Great Depression era. His published short story "The Little Dog Laughed" impresses no one in his seedy boarding house except for one 14-year-old girl. Destitute, he wanders into the Columbia Buffet where he meets Camilla Lopez, a waitress.

Inspiration

He was one of the first writers to portray the tough times faced by many people in Depression-era Los Angeles. Robert Towne has called Ask The Dust the greatest novel ever written about Los Angeles.

The American author Charles Bukowski cites John Fante's work as a significant influence on his own writing, in particular Ask the Dust. Bukowski, who befriended the older author towards the end of Fante's life, wrote a foreword to this novel for the Black Sparrow Press reprint edition. Bukowski states in this forward "Fante was my god"

Ask the Dust contains thematic similarities to Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel Hunger. Fante was a great admirer of Hamsun. The title Ask the Dust derives from Knut Hamsun's novel Pan from 1894, in which Lt. Glahn tells the story about the Girl in the tower:

"The other one he loved like a slave, like a crazed and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life."

See also

• Ask the Dust (film)

External links

• Short radio script from Ask the Dust at the California Legacy Project.
• An annual festival honoring John Fante is held in his father's birthplace, Torricella Peligna, Italy