Thursday 20 November 2008

Dan Fante - son of John and author of Rebel Inc title Chump Change and Mooch - wrote an introduction to the 1999 edition of Wait Until Spring, Bandini

Many years ago an old friend of my father's told me the following story: A twenty-one year old John Fante was broke, new in California, scratching out a buck by working on the docks and fish canaries in Wilmington, forty miles south of Los Angeles. It was 1930. The income from whatever jobs my old man could pick up went to support his mother, sister, and brothers. But John Fante was a ballsy kid. He began writing letters to H.L. Mencken, the editor of the famous literary magazine, The American Mercury, strenuously suggesting to Mencken that he publish his stuff. According to young Fante, the Mercury was missing out on the new Sherwood Anderson. The next Knut Hamsun. Mencken's replies were tolerant. He wrote back encouraging my father to send him his stories. But that created a problem for John Fante; he had no stories, only ideas for stories. And the absolute conviction that he could produce brilliant fiction, by the goddamn ream and truckload, if necessary; if only someone would pay him. And then there was this other sticky problem; my father couldn't type. Undaunted, a pack of Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket, flashing his indestructible grin, 21-year-old John Fante bounced up the steps of a local newspaper office late one afternoon. In the press room he inquired of a staff reporter if he'd mind permitting the use of an idle typewriter for the evening. Fante explained that he had a story to write. A great story. A brilliant story. A yarn of such dimension and profundity that the very nature of American literature might be metamorphosed by sunup. The reporter, as my father's friend tells it, scratched his head, pointed the kid toward an empty desk and said, 'knock yourself out.' By the following morning not only had John Fante become a two-finger typist, but the pages he'd written were in an air mail envelope on their way to The American Mercury Magazine in Baltimore. As a young writer my father was a blow torch of energy. In the early days if you'd asked him who the best writer in American was, in a heartbeat he'd bark, 'Jesus me, John Fante, who else?' So what happened to the literary career of John Fante? How is it that one of the finest writers of his generation faded into anonymity, only to be rediscovered fifty years later, months before his death? Time passed. My father become a regular contributor to Mencken's American Mercury and other magazines. He gained a decent literary reputation. But these were the days of The Great Depression and times were tough. Damn tough. One night in 1934 at Musso/Frank's Restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, John Fante's drinking buddy and fellow pinball addict, Frank Fenton, came up with a money-making scheme; an idea for a story the two of them could write and sell to the movies - a gangster ripoff of a John Dillinger theme. Fenton knew a guy at one of the studios. A story editor named Ross Wills. Pop was broke, as usual, and so was willing to try anything to hustle a buck. In a few days the two finished the nonsense and submitted it to Warner Brothers. Schazaam! By the end of the week John Fante had his first job as a screenwriter. Two hundred and fifty bucks a week. A fortune! From then on, for the remainder of his best writing years, my father would squeeze the udders of this fat financial sow for every buck he could get. The book you're holding, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, was written after a flush screenwriting period at one of the major Hollywood studios. It has been taken for granted by many that John Fante 'sold out' his talent for the big money of the film business, that his literary career ended in the parking lot of Paramount Studios. In my own fiction work, I've contributed to this notion. But, in truth, this is only half right. Bad luck is the real reason my father became a forgotten writer. Hideous - fucked - bad luck!

Today in America in 1999, more than seventeen years after his death, John Fante's Ask The Dust is regarded as a minor master-piece. In fact, recently, one American magazine said John Fante should be numbered among the great writers of the Twentieth Century. So why is it that when Ask The Dust was originally released in 1939, it sold less than three thousand copies? The book received excellent reviews. John Fante rightly hoped it would establish him as a major author of his time. Even Stackpole & Sons, the publisher, thought so. So why? I can recall half-a-dozen stories of my old man's preposterously lousy luck as a writer but this is the one that most stands out at the moment. As it happens, in 1939 Stackpole published (without permission by the author) a book called Mien Kampf. The book's writer was a literary amateur at best. His syntax was confusing. Goofy. His paragraphs rambled and he had a tendency to endlessly rant about minutia and shit. And of course Adolph Hitler was pissed off at everybody. So it was the Fuhrer's decision to sue Stackpole & Sons for not properly asking permission to publish his jail-house manifesto. The money that would have gone to promote Ask The Dust in 1939 and give John Fante the literary recognition he deserved, was spent on attorneys to settle a legal battle. Until Charles Bukowski mentioned to John Martin at Black Sparrow Press that he had pulled a copy of Ask The Dust off the dusty shelves of the L.A. Public Library, my father's book was forgotten. Such was John Fante's literary luck.

But here's the up side; my father lived a fun, reckless lifestyle. His favorite hobbies were playing stud poker at The Garden of Allah Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, boozing with his writer pals, and whacking a golf ball four days a week at Rancho Park golf course. Pop's prose were brilliant. He could have, should have, had the literary reputation of a Hemingway or a Steinbeck, or a Saroyan, but fate conspired to deal him a pair of deuces - not a fistful of kings. So here then is Wait Until Spring, Bandini, John Fante's first novel. It is the beginning of the literary saga of Arturo Bandini. The book stands by itself for its excellence. To quote my main man: ...So long as lips can read, and eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee. Enjoy.

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