It's slim, otherwise 5 stars.
If you fancy being a writer someday, this is the book for you. This author bursts with brilliance of post war Los Angeles. Cannery-row, but from the eyes of a young artist. The great fear and uncertainty of not knowing if you truly have talent, or even if you do whether it will be recognized, is overwhelming to the protagonist. Arturo Bandino is to John Fante as Henry Chinaski is to Charles Bukowski. This is how they tell their lives of being an author of integrity, all the while eking out a life that vacillates between euphoric contentment and brutal depression. This book, my fourth of his, explains why Bukowski liked him so much (I’ve read most of his). It is about an author trying to be as great as the people who inspired him (Sherwood Anderson, Hamsun, London etc) and making a living at it. His young lust for beautiful women (especially their behinds) builds until it ultimately explodes in humiliating defeat, often agonizing heartbreak. He seeks solace as well, finding love in an older woman – even that he destroys in what can only be described as madness, where his flights of fancy lead him into all sorts of trouble. He can’t stay in one place long, nor maintain relationships with writers he adores or casual friends. This book is a romp, a riot really, and Fante’s style is often hilarious. It would be like Woody Allen, if he would have a mean streak and was prone to drunken brawling. It’s very hard to separate the author from his creation, the latter revealing so many embarrassing personal facts and escapades that it seems as though they must be true. This is a fun and easy read, a short book. Fante has no patience for tedium, nor does Arturo, the creation, so there is nothing boring here. When he gets fed up, he just packs up and moves to another adventure. He’ll wake up in a hospital here and there, and immediately start hitting on the nurse. Fante is not nearly so crude and nasty as Bukowski, his stuff is a good primer to decide if you want to take that next step. Here are a few items I marked, since he tells it so much better than I:
p. 23, our hero feeling optimistic after getting enough cash to exchange his rags for better clothes: “The sun hit my face like a big golden eye…it promised a bright and glorious day. I shot out of bed, opened the window wide and called out to the world, hello everybody! Good luck to all! …In my fine Goodwill pinstripe suite and my rakish fedora, I tucked a copy of the American Phoenix under my arm and strode out to conquer a woman….I paused and listened. I heard something. It was the sound of happiness. It was my own heart beating softly, rhythmically…Well-dressed folk moved in and out through the revolving doors. They were people like myself, neatly attired, the better class.”
p. 57, remembering his past, discovering in youth to love of literature and torment of the difficulty of writing: “One day I went to the bookshelves, and pulled out a book. It was Winesburg, Ohio. I sat at a long mahogany table and began to read. I read another. I read and I read, and I was heartsick and lonely and in love with a book, many books, until it came naturally, and I sat there with a pencil and a long tablet, and tried to write, until I felt I could not go on because the words would not come as they did in Anderson, they only came like drops of blood from my heart.”
p. 102, there is so much pain and loathing in this book, but I cherry pick the beautiful moments which he evokes so wonderfully: “When day broke I walked barefoot in the water, in the moist sand, a mile to the cannery settlement, teeming with workers, men and women, emptying the fishing boats, dressing and canning the fish in big corrugated buildings. They were mostly Japanese and Mexican folk from San Pedro. There were two restaurants. The food was good and cheap. Sometimes I walked to the end of the pier, to the ferryboat landing, where the boats took off across the channel to San Pedro. It was twenty-five cents round trip. I felt like a millionaire whenever I plunked down my quarter and sailed for Pedro. I rented a bike and toured the Palos Verdes hills. I found the public library and loaded up on books. Back at my shack I build a fire in the woodstove and sat in the warmth and read Dostoevsky and Flaubert and Dickens and all those famous people. I lacked for nothing. My life was a prayer, a thanksgiving. My loneliness was an enrichment. I found myself bearable, tolerable, even good. Sometimes I wondered what had happened to the writer who had come there. Had I written something and left the place? I touched my typewriter and mused at the action of the keys. It was another life. I had never been here before. I would never leave it.” But of course, this is all momentary, then the Sicilian wrestler moves into the next door on the beach. This sketch reminds me of bliss captured by Bukowski once riding a bus across Appalachia and stopping in a little mountain diner.
p. 127, more apropos, the author withdraws from a co-scriptwriting deal and then sees the movie without his name on it, somewhat torn with regret: “I went up to my room and fell on the bed exhausted. I had been deluding myself. There was no pleasure in seeing Sin City. I was really not pleased at Velda’s failure. In truth I felt sorry for her, for all writers, for the misery of the craft. I lay in that tiny room and it engulfed me like a tomb.” Ironically, literature is rendered from his loathing of writing. This is typical of this man and his successor.