John Fante’s 100th Birthday
John Fante would have been 100 years old today, and he probably wouldn’t have recognized the downtown Los Angeles he knew (except perhaps for King Eddy’s Saloon). But his city is preserved at least in writing. Ask the Dust, considered by many to be Fante’s masterpiece, the third of four novels featuring the struggling writer Arturo Bandini, is packed with the poetry of Los Angeles, a siren of a city. Released in 1939 by a publisher paying heavy legal damages for publishing an unauthorized edition of Mein Kampf, Ask the …
