Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39615 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-05
• Released on: 2002-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780876856499
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author

John Fante began writing in 1929 and published his first short story in 1932. His first novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, was published in 1938 and was the first of his Arturo Bandini series of novels, which also include The Road to Los Angeles and Ask the Dust. A prolific screenwriter, he was stricken with diabetes in 1955. Complications from the disease brought about his blindness in 1978 and, within two years, the amputation of both legs. He continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce, and published Dreams from Bunker Hill, the final installment of the Arturo Bandini series, in 1982. He died on May 8, 1983, at the age of seventy-four.

Customer Reviews

Entertaining, Bukowski-esque Homage to 30's LA
John Fante's youthful Arturo Bandini is an intriguing, bizarre and absolutely unique character. Growing up poor, in East L.A., Bandini endures a succession of menial jobs to help support his mother and sister. His odd, self-taught upbringing gives him a huge vocabulary and the willingness to employ it at a moment's notice. Bandini is insecure, shy, well-spoken and monumentally unfit for adulthood.

_The Road to Los Angeles_ describes Bandini's rites of passage and inevitable coming of age. Covering his relationships with "hidden women", his attempt at a first novel and a spate of unabashed cruelty towards various creatures, the protaganist is humorous but apparently teetering on the brink of insanity.

Bandini's BB-gun-fueled "war with the crabs" is a wonderfully comic extravaganza of unwarranted viciousness... "I shot crabs all that afternoon, until my shoulder hurt behind the gun and my eyes ached behind the gunsight. I was Dictator Bandini, Ironman of Crabland. This was another Blood Purge for the Fatherland. The had tried to unseat me, those damned crabs... had actually questioned the might of Superman Bandini! Well, they were going to get a lesson they would never forget. This was going to be the last revolution they'd never attempt, by Christ."

Fante is eminently readable and this book was particularly enjoyable. And, yes, I am a fan of Charles Bukowski as well ;-).

Outrageous Comedy
"The Road to Los Angeles" is Fante's first novel. He began it in 1933 and finished in 1936. The publishers rejected it and it was published about 50 years later by Black Sparrow press after the authors death. This is Fante's best novel and one of the funniest most enjoyable books I have read to date. Reading this is a wonder and a revelation, the prose raw and fresh, honest and hilarious. The story follows Arturo Bandini, a prideful fool of an eighteen year old as he makes his way in 1930s California. He lives with his mother and sister, works in a cannery, and aspires to be a great writer. Arturo has read too many books and has got hold of some bad philosophy. Fante uses this to poke fun at Nietsche's and Hitler's "superman" weltanschauung (worldview), which the befuddled Arturo pontificates every chance he gets. At the point when Nietzsche loses his mind he is said to have been watching a man whip an old horse, Nietzsche burst into tears and hugs the horse weeping uncontrollably. Fante uses this when in the book Arturo sees an old hunchback woman smiling in the park, his eyes drenced he carries her basket for her. After feeling pure empathy for her life and pain he says goodbye to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and runs home and apologizes to his mother. This doesn't last of course and he goes back to being the same old Arturo. Early in the novel he enacts a hilarious though disturbing blood purge ,"for the good of the Fatherland", against some crabs he imagined had questioned the might of Superman Bandini. Later in the book at times when he is down on himself he refers to himself as a crabkiller. There is much, much more. Please read this marvel of a novel by John Fante.

On The Road - A Dangerous Profession
After reading Fante's classic book, "Wait Until Spring, Bandini" I decided to continue tasting his prose. By chance I bought "The Road To Los Angeles" only to find out that it was in fact Fante's first book. The book seems to have been considered to racey to be published in 1936 when he first wrote it, but it was discovered in manuscript by his wife after his death in 1983. She had the book published in 1985.

By reading it, I found that Arturo Bandini was first created by Fante as a 20 year old, working in a California cannery. His depiction of the life of Bandini, an aspiring young author, seems, in part to be autobiographical. And, yet, it is clear why Fante chose to go backwards in the life of Bandini, when he wrote his second book, "Wait Until Spring." In Bandini chronology, the second book takes place before the first book and greatly explains from whence Bandini came.

"Road To LA" is a fabulous example of the vicissitudes of the mental processes of an aspiring young author. Bandini sees himself as a great author, yet the book shows the huge pendulous vacillations between an almost meglomaniacal belief in his own greatness to a totally insecure feeling of being just a mediocre hack.

The book does a splendid job of portraying a life representing the beginning of a profession which is often a "Dangerous Profession." Clearly, this precariousness is elucidated by Fante, as he shows just how easy it is to be almost on the edge of madness. It is most illustrative of how an author must be faced with the interpretation of human thought processes, as he works to put meaning into his work. And, not only meaning that is personal, but meaning that will be of value to those who may read his work.

While I would not recommend the book as the first foray for any reader into Fante's work, it is surely one that any reader who is interested in Fante's fascinating portrayals should find the time to read, as it takes one step further, toward the development of his character, and to the development of an author.