John Fante Ebook Collection [epub,mobi]

Ask The Dust:

Unanimously recognized as Fante’s greatest achievement this book tells the story of Arturo Bandini, a wannabe writer from Colorado looking for glory and inspiration on the streets of Los Angeles.

One day Arturo walks in a third-rate bar where the beer is cheap and smells acid ordering a coffee with his last 5 cents. The coffee tastes like rags’ rinse but what catches his attention is Camilla Lopez, the waitress, a Mexican that he admits isn’t beautiful yet attractive. The two start a complex and confused relationship that Fante renders beautifully in all its nuances of love, anger, revenge and hopelessness.

One could argue that Fante is what James Joyce would have wanted to be if faith hadn’t tasked him to come up with the stream of consciousness. Arturo’s thoughts flow effortlessly uncovering the weakest part of its persona and leaving the man’s raw flesh to react to the world around him.

Dreams From Bunker Hill:

My first collision with fame was hardly memorable. I was a busboy at Marx's Deli. The year was 1934. The place was Third and Hill, Los Angeles. I was twenty-one years old, living in a world bounded on the west by Bunker Hill, on the east by Los Angeles Street, on the south by Pershing Square, and on the north by Civic Center. I was a busboy nonpareil, with great verve and style for the profession, and though I was dreadfully underpaid (one dollar a day plus meals) I attracted considerable attention as I whirled from table to table, balancing a tray on one hand, and eliciting smiles from my customers. I had something else beside a waiter's skill to offer my patrons, for I was also a writer.

The Road to Los Angeles

I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead. My first job was ditchdigging a short time after I graduated from high school. Every night I couldn’t sleep from the pain in my back. We were digging an excavation in an empty lot, there wasn’t any shade, the sun came straight from a cloudless sky, and I was down in that hole digging with two huskies who dug with a love for it, always laughing and telling jokes, laughing and smoking bitter tobacco.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini

He came along, kicking the snow. Here was a disgusted man. His name was Svevo Bandini, and he lived three blocks down that street. He was cold and there were holes in his shoes. That morning he had patched the holes on the inside with pieces of cardboard from a macaroni box. The macaroni in that box was not paid for. He had thought of that as he placed the cardboard inside his shoes.

Full of Life

The first biography of one of the great outsiders of American literature. In the first comprehensive biography of John Fante, one of the great lost souls of twentieth-century literature, Stephen Cooper untangles the enigma of an authentic American original. By turns savage and poetic, violent and full of love, such underground novels as The Road to Los Angeles; Ask the Dust; and Wait Until Spring, Bandini simultaneously reveal and disguise their author.

The Wine of Youth

This edition of the legendary Dago Red, first published in 1940, contains seven new stories, including "A Nun No More" and "My Father’s God."

The Brotherhood of the Grape

Henry Molise, a 50 year old, successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his aging parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, brick laying father, Nick, though weak and alcoholic, can still strike fear into the hearts of his sons. His mother, though ill and devout to her Catholicism, still has the power to comfort and confuse her children. This is typical of Fante's novels, it's autobiographical, and brimming with love, death, violence and religion. Writing with great passion Fante powerfully hits home the damage family can wreck upon us all.