John Fante's Ask the Dust: A Joining of Voices and Views(Critical Studies in Italian America)

This volume assembles for the first time a staggering multiplicity of reflections and readings of John Fante's 1939 classic, Ask the Dust, a true testament to the work's present and future impact. The contributors to this work—writers, critics, fans, scholars, screenwriters, directors, and others—analyze the provocative set of diaspora tensions informing Fante's masterpiece that distinguish it from those accounts of earlier East Coast migrations and minglings. A must-read for aficionados of L.A. fiction and new migration literature, John Fante's "Ask the Dust": A Joining of Voices and Views is destined for landmark status as the first volume of Fante studies to reveal the novel's evolving intertextualities and intersectionalities. Contributors: Miriam Amico, Charles Bukowski, Stephen Cooper, Giovanna DiLello, John Fante, Valerio Ferme, Teresa Fiore, Daniel Gardner, Philippe Garnier, Robert Guffey, Ryan Holiday, Jan Louter, Chiara Mazzucchelli, Meagan Meylor, J'aime Morrison, Nathan Rabin, Alan Rifkin, Suzanne Manizza Roszak, Danny Shain, Robert Towne, Joel Williams

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 1. New Approaches to John Fante's Ask the Dust From the Particular to the Universal: Vittorini's Italian Adaptation of Ask the Dust 15 Valerio Ferme When Spirituality Ebbs and Flows: Religion and Diasporic Alienation in Ask the Dust 43 Suzanne Manizza Roszak "Sad Flower in the Sand": Camilla Lopez and the Erasure of Memory in Ask the Dust 58 Meagan Meylor "A Ramona in Reverse": Writing the Madness of the Spanish Past in Ask the Dust 83 Daniel Gardner 2. Sibling Arts: Ask the Dust in Dance, Music, the Graphic Novel, and French Dancing with the Dust: Translating Ask the Dust to the Stage 111 J'aime Morrison Ask the Lyrics: John Fante in Music 127 Chiara Mazzucchelli Watch Out or You'll End up in My Novel: The Lost World of Ask the Dust 145 Robert Guffey Don't Ask the French 157 Philippe Garnier 3. Ask the Dust and Its Effects: Readers and Writers Respond Amid the Dust 167 Miriam Amico The Passion That Became a Festival 177 Giovanna DiLello I Had Bandini: Reading Ask the Dust in Prison 193 Joel Williams Writing in the Dust 201 Alan Rifkin How Hitler Nearly Destroyed the Great American Novel 213 Ryan Holiday 4. Ask the Dust and Its Due: Two Filmmakers and Bukowski Pay Tribute Interview with Robert Towne 237 Nathan Rabin Letters from Los Angeles 245 Jan Louter "My Dear Bukowski," "Hello John Fante": Preface to Ask the Dust 261 John Fante and Charles Bukowski 5. The Attic, the Archive, and Beyond From Family to Institutional Memory: A Conversation with Stephen Cooper 273 Teresa Fiore Prelude to "Prologue to Ask the Dust" 281 Stephen Cooper Goodbye, Bunker Hill 290 John Fante The Road to John Fante's Los Angeles 296 Stephen Cooper Acknowledgments 315 List of Contributors 319 Bibliography 325 Index 331

About the Author :
Stephen Cooper (Edited By) Stephen Cooper is Professor of English, California State University, Long Beach. He is the author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante (Angel City Press, 2005). Clorinda Donato (Edited By) Clorinda Donato is the George L. Graziadio Chair of Italian Studies at California State University, Long Beach. She co-wrote The "Encyclopédie Méthodique" in Spain.

Review :
A decisive contribution to the critical understanding and (re)assessment of John Fante's Ask the Dust, a novel that, while appreciated by many, has never really made it into the canon. These essays effectively demonstrate the theoretical and thematic currency of the novel for today's critics and scholars, promising to become a landmark in the landscape of Fante scholarship.---Donatella Izzo, Università degli studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" John Fante's 'Ask the Dust' confirms the extent to which Fante's work has influenced and inspired the work of so many others through the decades and to this day. He does belong on the big bookshelf of accomplished American authors, neatly tucked in before Faulkner and followed by the likes of Fitzgerald and Frost.-- "Enthymema" John Fante's Ask the Dust communicates the importance of the novel by giving space to both scholarly essays and nonacademic testimonies, which investigate the role the book has played in the development of the authors here gathered. Rather than a thorough work of academic inquiry, the present volume is therefore an homage to the writer, as the editors themselves declare.-- "Iperstoria"