John Fante

John Fante (April 8th 1909 - May 8th 1983) is a novelist, essay writer and American scenario writer.

Life

Wire of Italian emigrant, John Fante is born with the Colorado, the United States, in 1909, within a believing and preserving family. Its childhood of turbulent street urchin will be done within a school Jesuit, where Fante will discover painfully the need for Liberté, the Sexualité, and the writing.

It starts to write very early and, if one believes his of it Romance autobiographical, is shown like a particularly sensitive child, ignited, charismatic and avid of the beauty of the world. Its first news will draw the attention of famous the H.L. Mencken, editor association of the prestigious literary review The American Mercury , which will publish the prose of the Fante young person regularly (his first news is published whereas it is 26 years old, but it is made pass for young person, by pride and taste of the setting in scene of its own talent) and will keep even a 20 years correspondence with the young writer (see Correspondance Fante/Mencken, 10/18).

Its first novel Bandini , appears in 1938 (although he wrote already previously the book the road of Los Angeles' in 1933 and corrected his outline about 1936, which will be published only after its death in 1986). Largely autobiographical, one follows there the peregrinations of the young person Arturo Bandini, wire of Italian immigrants, skilful rhetor, manipulator, player and sensualist, to seek a place with the sun starting from his native Colorado. Work is skilful, elegant, watch sure Bandini/Fante of him and its madness, well in adequacy with the personality of Fante: liar, player, he did not hesitate here, and as he will not cease doing it, to disguise reality, to give him more Substance, more taste, more power. And the effort goes to wonder: Bandini is an inimitable hero, to border-line , always to seek the extreme and nausea in its desires: the Art, the Philosophy, the Woman S. Bandini constitutes the first quarter of an autobiographical cycle made up of the road of Los Angeles , Demande with Dust , and much more tardily of Rêves of Bunker Hill .

At the time of Request to dust (1939), Fante is still a tortured and impulsive kid, who settled in a small hotel held like a boarding house by a patroness. Fante saw then only, sends money to his/her mother as soon as fall a seal from the American Mercury , prophesies the world, is unceasingly tended between two abysses: women and the Literature.

Fante marries in 1937 a young person and beautiful editor, Joyce, then publishes Plein with Life whose success will open to him the doors of a career of scenario writer with Hollywood. This career was probably food for Fante, which regretted the noisy cruelty of its work of novelist. It will however never leave this last, still dictating with his Joyce wife the tests of Rêves of Bunker Hill at 74 years, plugged by complications of sound diabetes.

Fante had four child, of which the writer daN Fante.

Glance on Work

As raised it Charles Bukowski (which always saw in Fante a Master, cash like a major influence on its desire for writing; he was even the craftsman of the republication of complete works of Fante at Black Sparrow Close , editor of Charles Bukowski), the work of John Fante is marked by the taste of excess, the provocation, the systematic handing-over in question of the certainty, conventions. Where other kids do what one to them says when one asks them not to approach the window, Fante jumps. This same need to taste the life AD-nauseam reproduced in its life, with situations of permanent chaos. John Fante/Bandini was a man player, impulsive, and always frightened with the idea to pass beside the marrow of the life, distressed by the whirring humdrum routine of happy people. This need for savor precipitated the author like the character in disturbed life, infinitely rich, but such an intolerable for its close relations.

French bibliography

the Road of Los Angeles , written in 1933, published in 1986 at Bourgois, exists with editions 10/18 (n°2028).
Bandini , 1938, published at Bourgois in 1985, exists with editions 10/18 (n°1915).
Request with Dust , 1939, published in 1986 at Bourgois, exists with editions 10/18 (n°1954).
Companions of the Bunch, 1977, editions 10/18 (n°2111).
Full with Life , 1952, editions 10/18 (n°2089).
My Stupid Dog , 1986, editions 10/18 (n°2023).
Dreams of Bunker Hill , 1982, editions 10/18 (n°2056).
the Orgy 1933 was a bad year, 1985, editions 10/18 (n°2071).
Wine of Youth , 1985, editions 10/18 (n°1998).
Correspondence Fante/Mencken , editions 10/18 (n°2344).
Large Hunger (news 1932-1959), published at Bourgois in 2001. Publication in 10/18.

Biographies published

John Fante, distress and the light , by Silvain Reiner, published into 1999 with the editions of the Astral Beaver.
Full with Life , by Stephen Cooper, published in 2001 at Bourgois. Publication in 10 November 18th, th and th 2002.

Extracts

“a beautiful day, as beautiful as a girl. It rolled on the back and looked at the clouds slipping by towards the South. All up there the wind blew in storm; he had intended to say that he came from the fine bottom of Alaska and Russia, but the high mountains protected the city. He thought of the books of Rosa, with their covers of oil-cloth as blue as the sky this morning. One day peaceful, two dogs strolls some, briefly stopping with the foot of each tree. It stuck its ear against the ground. Over there, to the north of the city, in the cemetery of the highlands, one descended Rosa in his tomb. It blew gently on the ground, embraced it, put a little ground on the end of its language. One day, he would ask his father to cut a stele for the tomb of Rosa” ( Bandini , Christian Bourgois editor, 1985, p. 242).
“One evening I sat on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, in full heart of Los Angeles. It is one evening important in my life, because it is necessary that I make a decision for the hotel. Or I pay what I owe or I débarasse the floor. It is what the note says, the note that the hotel boss slipped under my door. Big problem, that, which deserves the highest attention. I solve it by extinguishing the light and while going to lay down me” ( Demande with dust , Editions 10/18, 2002, p. 11).
“It passed the arm around the neck to me. It drew me the head and inserted me its teeth in the lower lip. I struggled to release me because that hurt. It remained to look at me regaining the hotel, all to smile, an arm passed over the file of the seat. I left my handkerchief to wipe the lips. The handkerchief had blood above. I followed the greyness of the corridor, to my room. Hardly I closed the door that all the desire which had been lacking to me right one moment before is seized me. It knocked me the cranium and hurled me in the fingers. I threw myself on the bed and I tore the pillow with my hands” ( Demande with dust , Editions 10/18, 2002, pp. 113-114).

External bonds

Reading mp3 (delivers audio) incipit of '' My dog Stupide ''
Article written by his/her son daN Fante
French Editions of works of John Fante

Random links: