John Fante's Ask the Dust

John Fante's Ask the Dust

A Joining of Voices and Views

  • Author: Cooper, Stephen; Donato, Clorinda; Amico, Miriam; Bukowski, Charles; Cooper, Stephen; Di Lello, Giovanna; Fante, John; Ferme, Valerio; Fiore, Teresa; Gardner, Daniel; Guffey, Robert; Garnier, Philippe; Holiday, Ryan; Louter, Jan; Mazzucchelli, Chiara
  • Publisher: Fordham University Press
  • Serie: Critical Studies in Italian America
  • ISBN: 9780823287864
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780823287888
  • eISBN Epub: 9780823287871
  • Place of publication:  New York , United States
  • Year of publication: 2020
  • Year of digital publication: 2020
  • Month: April
  • Language: English

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

  • Cover
  • John Fante’s Ask the Dust
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • CONTENTS
  • Introduction
  • 1. New Approaches to John Fante’s Ask the Dust
    • From the Particular to the Universal: Vittorini’s Italian Adaptation of Ask the Dust
    • When Spirituality Ebbs and Flows: Religion and Diasporic Alienation in Ask the Dust
    • “Sad Flower in the Sand”: Camilla Lopez and the Erasure of Memory in Ask the Dust
    • “A Ramona in Reverse”: Writing the Madness of the Spanish Past in Ask the Dust
  • 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
    • Ask the Lyrics: John Fante in Music
    • Watch Out or You’ll End up in My Novel: The Lost World of Ask the Dust
    • Don’t Ask the French
  • 3. Ask the Dust and Its Effects: Readers and Writers Respond
    • Amid the Dust
    • The Passion That Became a Festival
    • I Had Bandini: Reading Ask the Dust in Prison
    • Writing in the Dust
    • How Hitler Nearly Destroyed the Great American Novel
  • 4. Ask the Dust and Its Due: Two Filmmakers and Bukowski Pay Tribute
    • Interview with Robert Towne
    • Letters from Los Angeles
    • “My Dear Bukowski,” “Hello John Fante”: Preface to Ask the Dust
  • 5. The Attic, the Archive, and Beyond
    • From Family to Institutional Memory: A Conversation with Stephen Cooper
    • Prelude to “Prologue to Ask the Dust”
    • Goodbye, Bunker Hill
    • The Road to John Fante’s Los Angeles
  • Acknowledgments
  • List of Contributors
  • Bibliography
  • Index

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

By subscribing, you accept our Privacy Policy