Analysis of Arturo Bandini in John Fante’s Ask The Dust



Analysis of Arturo Bandini in John Fante’s Ask The Dust

By Martin Brown

Ask The Dust by John Fante was published in 1939. The novel has been likened by critics fortunate enough to have come across it to the work of Kerouac, Steinbeck, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Fante however never received anywhere near the recognition of these writers, largely due to the publishing house which accepted Ask The Dust being sued by none other than Adolf Hitler. The publishers had printed an unauthorised edition of Mein Kampf just before Ask the Dust, and the resulting legal costs left them unable to promote Fante’s novel. As a result, I feel the book has been unfairly ignored.

The novel has been written about by many critics, mostly concerning its relevance as a novel of place. It has been compared with Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust in its representation of Southern California in the 1930s. It was primarily marketed as a love story. However, it is the central character of Arturo Bandini and his development from Fante’s previous two novels involving him that has earned Ask the Dust its reputation as Fante’s best work.

The urban tragedy is set in Los Angeles in the height of the depression. Bandini, a young writer, has moved to this Bohemian Utopia ‘with $150 in my pocket and big plans in my head’. Bandini endures poverty and hardship, struggling to survive on his writing. Eventually he is sucked into a bizarre love-hate relationship with a Columbian waitress, Camilla Lopez, who runs deluded into the desert never to return as Bandini finally publishes his first book.

Stephen Cooper, in his biography of Fante[1], presents three fascinating theories about the etymology of Bandini. Firstly that Fante took the name Bandini from a brand of California fertiliser: ‘Fante would certainly have been aware of, and appreciated, the ironic juxtaposition of the word art in Arturo and the implied shit in the Bandini bag’[2]. The second is that Fante mockingly used the words ‘author’ and ‘Banning’: the artist juxtaposed with the successes of Phineas Banning. Lastly, Fante could have taken the name from Don Arturo Bandini, a misfit beatnik from a prominent family in nineteenth century California. Each theory shows the mocking superiority Fante has over Bandini within the text.

Bandini is an exponent of what Philip H. Melling notes in his analysis of writing of the period: ‘The novel of the 1930s is dominated by the itinerant traveller who lives on the periphery of society and is forever seeking new adventures.’[3]. Bandini is a young man, and has had a rough childhood, eventually escaping to Los Angeles, like Fante did. However, the strife in Bandini’s life has been centred on his life in one location. Thus when Bandini leaves for Los Angeles, his idealism shows itself in how he perceives himself in his more arrogant moments; a young genius; a new and exciting man toiling and experiencing what he does to better his work. A surreal comic moment in the novel sees Bandini fantasising, imagining his work will be ‘in the library with the big boys on the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there’.

Unlike the previous two components of the Bandini saga (Wait Until Spring, Bandini and The Road to Los Angeles, the latter unpublished until 1986, after Fante’s death), the story begins without giving itself away in advance. The opening is a short, sharp piece about Bandini’s decision to solve his rent problem by going to bed – a typical element of lowlife writer Charles Bukowski’s work. Fante was a large influence on Bukowski, whose work tended to deal mainly with nihilism, alcohol and sex. Bukowski is cited as the author whose references to Fante saved his idol’s work from almost total obscurity. Indeed, he even went so far as to write the introduction in 1979 to an edition of Ask the Dust, citing it as the first novel which truly inspired him.

Fante has thus given Bandini a mix of conflicting Bohemian and Nietzschean ideas. Whilst escaping in a quest to find happiness, Bandini is driven by a resentment and hatred spawned from his race and his creed. Bandini is widely recognised as a largely autobiographical character. He was, like Fante, raised as a Catholic in an Italian-American family, and is escaping what he sees as an inept ethos. Many of Fante’s early short stories and The Road to Los Angeles show a passionate and vengeful resentment towards the religion he was brought up with.

Bandini therefore displays a fiery, almost pathological, determination to make it big as a writer. He is volatile and reactionary, though perhaps not as much as in the previous two Bandini novels. His dream of recognition as a writer, and the fame, wealth and, of course, women who lie within it is his Utopian desire. Bandini frequently fantasises about these within the narrative. The satirical results comprise most of the humour in the novel, as the aforementioned fantasy about his work being in the library displays. Even when he is about to steal milk in a petty criminal scheme, he glorifies his guilt with regard to his imagined fame. ‘Headlines in the papers, promising writer caught stealing milk, famous protégé of J.C. Hackmuth hauled into court on petty thief charge, reporters swarming round me, flashlights popping…’ He then goes on to cover up his poverty even in this deluded fantasy in his explanation to reporters; ‘I’ve really got plenty of money, big sales of manuscripts and all that, but I was doing a yarn about a fellow who steals a quart of milk, and I wanted to write from experience’.

Taking Bandini’s infatuation with wealth and fame into account, Fante could be argued to be attacking and satirising the application of human idealism. Bandini has rejected Christianity, yet through his immature and inept nature, he is simply replacing tenets of Catholicism with materialism. This device is used by Fante in other novels; for instance, baseball obsessed Dominic Molise in 1933 Was a Bad Year personifies his pitching arm as a kind of sacred icon. The sacred texts of Bandini’s new materialism are Nietzsche and the great writers, and the written word replacing the beads of the rosary. Bandini’s ‘God’ is undoubtedly ‘the great Hackmuth’, a thinly disguised literary interpretation of Fante’s hero H.L. Mencken. Mencken was a writer and journalist, who among his numerous works translated Nietzsche, and edited The Atlantic Monthly, which published Fante’s first stories. Fante remarked in his early correspondence with Mencken that he was indeed Fante’s God now, having renounced religion. Hackmuth is thus the editor of the magazine who publishes Bandini’s two short stories The Little Dog Laughed and his accidental story, The Long Lost Hills.

The latter is a ‘miracle’: Bandini, in the depths of his torment, writes a long letter to Hackmuth, who replies, suggesting he might publish it and enclosing a cheque. Bandini’s initial response is clichéd euphoria: ‘The letter slipped from my fingers and zigzagged to the floor. I stood up and looked in the mirror. My mouth was wide open. I walked to Hackmuth’s picture on the opposite wall and put my fingers on the firm face that looked out at me’. Bandini’s picture of Hackmuth has become an icon, and his story being published has been construed as proof of the real Hackmuth’s (who Bandini has never previously met, and thus in terms of DeCarte’s philosophy is unaware whether he exists) power. Bandini continues, worshipping his deity: ‘I started to cry. Oh God, Hackmuth! How can you be such a wonderful man! How is it possible?’. The final sentences of the paragraph describe the cheque Hackmuth has sent and Bandini’s reaction to it: ‘It was $175. I was a rich man once more. $175!’, re-emphasising the material context of this idolatry. Bandini then goes on a spending spree, but whilst spending plenty on himself, is keen to give money to others, mostly as an exercise in arrogance. He pays off his past two months’ rent and for two months in advance, slipping his landlady (against her wishes) an extra five dollars, arguing ‘Pooh, a mere five dollars, a trifle.’ This is perhaps ironically suggesting that money has given him a charitable, Christian power, depicting Bandini’s perception of virtue of money.

Nevertheless, Bandini does enter the Church of Our Lady when in trouble. He claims this is for ‘sentimental reasons’. This shows a vulnerable side to the character – perhaps proof that his idealism is his most fundamental flaw. He cannot shake off this concept that if he tries hard enough he will succeed, and is incapable of diluting this vision with any realism. Therefore when obstacles confront him he is in worse shape to cope with them than he otherwise would be. This will often expose another facet of his youth, and result in a tantrum, heightening the problems facing him. This tool is used by Fante again and again: when Bandini suffers a writer’s block; when he finds Los Angeles not all he expected; when he is faced with situations involving Camilla; and more.

Bandini is a very masculine character. Fante admitted ‘The first book (Wait Until Spring, Bandini) came from my heart; the second (Ask the Dust) from my head and my prick’[4]. Bandini even uses his writing as a tool to express this, referring at one point to Hackmuth’s ‘pen like a sword’. His dogged determination and his reluctance not to be set in his ways pay testament to Bandini’s machismo. He is convinced that he, Arturo Bandini, will make it as a writer and rebel against the Catholic and human conditioning he has been put through with literature and fame.

A key facet to Arturo Bandini is his racial background. From Italian stock, he has suffered taunts all his life; names like ‘Wop’ or ‘Dago’ being commonplace in his interaction with others. However, Bandini is absolutely determined that he is American; that he fits in. His fantasy to be in the library with Dreiser and Mencken, as well as a comic satire, shows a desire to be an American writer.

His renouncing of Catholicism could be interpreted as him renouncing his race to feel more American. He will insult all other races to compensate for his insecurities. When he sees a Mexican man going with the prostitute whom Bandini has turned down, he is filled with rage and bitterness. His reaction shows his masculine as well as his racial insecurity ‘Go ahead and smile. You stinking Greaser – what have you got to smile about? You come from a bashed and busted race, and just because you went to a room with one of our white girls, you smile. Do you think you would have had a chance had I accepted on the Church steps?’.

Bandini is ruthless in his pursuit of Camilla Lopez, despite his racial jibes at her. She is infatuated with Sammy, a dying author and bar owner, who lives like a hermit in the Mojave Desert. Bandini is scathing about Sammy’s ‘inability to write’. This depicts his mannish jealousy and determination. However, Bandini’s racial attitude leads to the crux of his relationship with Camilla. Bandini and Lopez are kindred in their lack of Aryan purity, yet the competitive and proud nature of Bandini forces the relationship into conflict. He will call Camilla a ‘Mayan princess’ or alternatively a ‘Spick’ or ‘Greaser’ in the same chapter. Even as Bandini acknowledges his weakness and expresses his sorrow, quoting ‘when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I am ashamed of the terrible thing I have done’, he continues doing it. This is because his racial insecurity and masculine shortcomings are both heavily ingrained and thus constant.

One of the foremost influences on the character of Bandini is the nameless narrator of Norwegian Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel, Hunger. Fante was known to be a devout fan of Hamsun’s. It is perhaps therefore little surprise that the two characters are similar in a number of ways. Both are writers living in squalor, often resorting to dishonest behaviour in order to survive and paying the consequences of a guilty conscience afterwards. The narrator of Hunger is ‘arrogant, he is infuriating, he has a cruel sense of humour; he is egotistical… he is obsessed with his own suffering, yet unsympathetic to others in difficult situations’[5].

Despite Fante’s more humane characterisation, both characters are, at times, arrogant to the point of being ridiculous. Both men will be assured of their own talents at one moment, yet as soon as they are tested by a harsh reality of some description will renounce their confidence, despairing in a petulant, immature and melodramatic fashion. Both characters have little or no experience with women. As a result, they each embark upon unconventional, bizarre relationships with unusual women, which deteriorate partly due to their own character; Bandini with Camilla Lopez, and the unnamed Hamsun anti hero with the timid and eccentric Ylajali.

A second character similar to Bandini comes from an author influenced by Fante, rather than an influence upon him. The central character for some of Charles Bukowski’s most accomplished novels, the drunk, older author Henry Chinaski bears more than a passing resemblance to Fante’s alter ego. A good example appears near the end of Women, where Chinaski gives some Mexican beggars fifty cents, before imagining the mock headline ‘IMMORTAL WRITER COMES TO AID OF STREET URCHINS’.

Chinaski is the perfect illustration of Fante’s influence on the beat generation. Bandini is a young writer, who has left home to undertake a youthful, idyllic, Bohemian quest to write. Such an ethos would stand the character quite comfortably in novels such as Kerouac’s On the Road, due to his youthful ‘get up and go’, or in Brautigan’s A Confederate General From Big Sur, due to his surreal and idyllic escapism. Likewise, the ongoing internal turmoil within Bandini as he struggles to come to terms with the grim and often unforgiving realities of warped, downtown Los Angeles, if developed, would not look entirely out of place in a bizarre, drugged satire from the pen of William Burroughs’ ‘Interzone’, such as those in his masterpiece, Naked Lunch.

Similarly, Fante’s son Dan’s anti-hero Bruno Dante, from his novels Chump Change and Mooch, displays a reckless indifference, whilst drawing upon the Hamsun template. In researching for this piece I was fortunate enough to secure a short interview with Dan Fante. His stylistic views on writing are he claims very similar to his father’s. When I asked about writing within the context of style and art, he was unsurprisingly frank: “It was Kafka who said that a good novel should have the same effect as a blow to the head.” When asked what good writing therefore was, he replied, “There's so much debate about what is good writing, especially from a university perspective. So I'll keep this simple so all the over educated geniuses can grok it. Good writing has impact. It is visceral. Experiential. It changes how we think. If the books you are reading don't make you hate and love and scream then go find some that do. Man gets his essence from books. The written word comes from the gods.”

Dan Fante’s views are frank and direct, but are combined with a humanity and romanticism that I feel can only have come from his father. I believe this is why, whilst Hamsun and Bukowski are remembered as ‘two writers who trawl the desperate parts of town, who experience the seedy, the downtrodden, the alienated, the shunned’[6], Bandini’s utter haplessness in his perception of his surroundings and events, combined with Fante’s style and tone, leave a decidedly less sour taste, however similar the three writers’ characterisation and focus may be.

The admission of racial insecurity shows a more mature side to Bandini than the reckless, proud figure from the previous two novels. The tone of the book has been widely written about. Bandini is still the macho, hapless young man from his previous appearances, but the more wide-ranging use of stream of consciousness to depict his self doubt has led critics to argue that Ask the Dust’s Bandini is a more sensitive one. Richard Collins notices the change: ‘He is still brash and full of himself, and his head is still full of wild schemes for unwritten books and ungarnered glories, but he is also full of sympathy’[7]. Thus he argues Bandini’s tragedy becomes one which we may sympathise with. In his brilliant introduction to Rebel Inc’s reprint of The Road to Los Angeles, John King remarks “Fante is clever. He gives Bandini humour, and this pulls him from the brink. You start to like him again, at least until his next outburst’[8]. For instance, Bandini’s humorous meditation on the local fruit seller in Chapter 3 of the book gives off a very sympathetic and likeable character, but is followed by a tirade of self-pity, using phrases as gratuitous as ‘I sat before it [the typewriter], overwhelmed with grief for Arturo Bandini’, and ‘Surely upon this earth no grief was greater than mine’.

Fante harnesses Bandini’s romanticism and inexperience to produce a touching and somewhat satirical tone. Fante was a feverishly dedicated writer. The frantic, stream of consciousness tone is no carefully planned component. Fante wrote Ask the Dust very quickly indeed, and did virtually no revision, recalling ‘It was an easy book to write…it just poured out of me’.[9] Its craft lies in the bodies of work before it, which built both the angst and frustration within Fante and the writing experience with which to express this angst within the story quickly and expertly.

Ask the Dust shows Fante’s extraordinary ability to mix the raw sentiment of his character in a poignant and touching manner, yet combined with a total control of the character. As John King comments, ‘He [Fante] tortures Bandini, makes the boy sweat, at the same time playing with the reader. While Bandini rambles, Fante writes in a simple style, each word surrounded by ten left unwritten; Fante has style, but…Bandini has not’[10]. Fante exposes Bandini’s faults casually and simply, whilst using a clear, simple style, similar to the modernist characteristic of reader interpretation.

Throwaway lines within the stream of consciousness can portray an ethos that one may use to interpret Bandini. For instance, in Chapter 12, his machismo and attitude toward women are perhaps portrayed in a far subtler way: ‘Below two women passed and I looked down upon their heads’ is not an overtly sexist comment, but the lack of qualms surrounding Bandini’s inclusion of the phrase and his more blatantly macho comments throughout the novel can use smaller pieces as this as a subtle support.

Therefore it is this craftsmanship which, ironically, I feel singles Fante out as a great writer. Bukowski describes it: ‘The lines rolled across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy, and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it… The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity’[11]. In Jay Martin’s Essay, John Fante: The Burden of Modernism and the Life of His Mind, he points to Fante’s train of thought moving within subconscious voices, linking them to literary meditation (as defined by writers such as Eliot and Martz, and often cited within the poetry of Donne). Martin justifies his comparison by quoting Louis Martz’s definition of the meditative poem as ‘a work that creates an interior drama of the mind; this dramatic action is usually created by some form of self address, in which the mind grasps firmly a problem or situation deliberately evoked by memory, (and) brings it forward toward the full light of memory.[12]’ Passages such as ‘A hundred and forty steps with tight fist, frightened of no man, but scared of the Third Street Tunnel, scared to talk through it – claustrophobia. Scared of high places too, and of blood, and of earthquake; otherwise quite fearless, excepting death, except the fear I’ll scream in a crowd, except the fear of appendicitis, except the fear of heart trouble…’ show that it is little surprise why Martin specifically cites Ask the Dust’s use of Martz’s elements – self address, memory and mental struggle – occurring where ‘Fante’s mind moves naturally into a meditative process’. Martin concludes ‘If Eliot and Stevens are our major American meditative poets, Fante is our major meditative novelist.’[13]

This tone has produced what many critics and fans alike have generally regarded as his best paragraph. From Chapter 1 of Ask the Dust, the young Bandini personifies Los Angeles; romantically, frantically and hopelessly imploring ‘Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.’

Will Balliet believed that Los Angeles was in fact a projection of Bandini’s own self: idyllic yet with a harsh and unforgiving edge. Richard Collins, in his remarkably accomplished essay on Ask the Dust, admits that ‘it could be argued that Bandini would not have been conceived in any other city’[14]. It is a touching point that, at the end of the novel, after losing Camilla, Bandini drives straight back to Los Angeles. When I asked Dan Fante this however, he seemed to disagree, arguing instead that “Los Angeles is a perfect manifestation of America. A great mirror of the U.S. in the 21st Century. Totally transitory. Hyper self-conscious. Consummate capitalism. So, as I say, perfectly American.”

These skills combine to produce an end result that has kept John Fante and Ask the Dust a cult literary phenomenon. It is what makes Fante unique when compared with contemporaries and successors alike, and why Ask the Dust has been described as ‘a brilliant book [and it has] changed countless lives’[15] and ‘on a par with The Great Gatsby for pure originality [and] clarity of vision’[16].

Bibliography and Background Reading

Interview with Dan Fante, conducted in September 2001

Bloom, Clive and Docherty, Brian – American Poetry: The Modernist Ideal (Macmillan, 1995)

Brauner, Asher – Interview with Catherine J.Kordich (The John Fante Website, 2000)

Brautigan, Richard – A Confederate General From Big Sur (Canongate, 1999 introduced by Duncan McClean) (originally published in1964)

Brautigan, Richard – Revenge of the Lawn (Canongate, 1999 introduced by Gordon Legge) (originally published in 1972)

Bukowski, Charles and others – Penguin Modern Poets 13 (Penguin, 1969)

Bukowski, Charles – Post Office (Virgin, 1992) (originally published in 1971)

Bukowski, Charles – Women (Virgin, 1992) (originally published in 1978)

Bukowski, Charles – You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense (Black Sparrow Press, 1992) (originally published in 1986)

Bukowski, Charles – Hollywood (Black Sparrow Press, 2000) (originally published in 1989)

Burroughs, William – Naked Lunch (Flamingo, 1993) (originally published in 1959)

Burroughs, William – Queer (Picador, 1995) (originally published in 1985)

Collins, Richard – John Fante: A Literary Portrait (Guernica, 2000)

Cooper, Stephen – Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante (Canongate, 2000)

de Palma, Ilaria and Bolognini, Lorenzo - Interview with Dan Fante (The John Fante Website, 2000)

Fante, Dan – Chump Change (Rebel Inc., 1998)

Fante, Dan – Mooch (Rebel Inc., 2000)

Fante, John – Wait Until Spring, Bandini (Canongate, 1999, introduced by Dan Fante) (originally published in 1938)

Fante, John – Ask the Dust (Canongate, 1998, introduced by Charles Bukowski) (originally published in 1939)

Fante, John – 1933 Was a Bad Year (Canongate, 2001) (originally published in 1985)

Fante, John – The Road to Los Angeles (Canongate, 2000, introduced by John King) (originally published in 1985)

Fante, John – The Brotherhood of the Grape (Black Sparrow Press, 1999) (originally published in 1977)

Fante, John – Dreams From Bunker Hill (Black Sparrow Press, 2000) (originally published in 1982)

Ford, Boris – The New Pelican Guide to American Literature (Penguin 1998)

Gordon, Neil – Shanghai’d in Tinseltown (Boston Review, 2000)

Hamsun, Knut – Hunger (Picador, 1974, translated by Robert Bly and introduced by Robert Bly and Isaac Bashevis Singer) (originally published 1921)

Hamsun, Knut – Hunger (Canongate, 1999, translated by Sverre Lyngstad and introduced by Duncan McLean)

Kerouac, Jack – On the Road (Penguin, 1972) (originally published in 1957)

Nicosia, Gerald – Sin and Redemption Italian Style (New Times Media, 2000)

Roca, Russ – John Fante (JCO, 2000)

Ruland, Richard and Bradbury, Malcolm – A History of American Literature (Routeledge, 1991)

Winterstein, Paul – Character Analysis of Arturo Bandini (The John Fante Website, 2000)

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[1] Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante by Stephen Cooper

[2] Ibid

[3] Nothing Else to Fear: New perspectives on America in the Thirties by Philip H. Melling

[4] A letter to Jo Campiglia

[5] Preface to Lyngstad translation of Hunger by Duncan MacLean

[6] Brian Dalton, Beat Scene Magazine #35

[7] John Fante: A Literary Portrait by Richard Collins

[8] Preface to Rebel Inc edition of The Road to Los Angeles by John King

[9] Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante by Stephen Cooper

[10] Preface to Rebel Inc edition of The Road to Los Angeles by John King

[11] Preface to 1980 edition of Ask the Dust by Charles Bukowski

[12] The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century by Louis L. Martz

[13] John Fante: The Burden of Modernism and the Life of His Mind by Jay Martin

[14] John Fante: A Literary Portrait by Richard Collins

[15] Dan Fante, interviewed in 2000 for the John Fante website

[16] Sin and Redemption Italian Style by Gerald Nicosia

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