Ask the Dust

Classic Literary Fiction

Author: John Fante

Arturo Bandini is a struggling writer lodging in a seedy LA hotel. While basking in the glory of having had a single short story published in a small magazine, he meets local waitress Camilla Lopez and they embark on a strange and strained love-hate relationship. Slowly, but inexorably, it descends into the realm of madness.Ask the Dust is one of the truly great, yet unsun….Read More

11 Books Similar to Ask the Dust

The Road to Los Angeles

From the Editorial Note:This novel introduces Fante's alter ego Arturo Bandini who reappears in Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), Ask the Dust (1939), and Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). The… Continue Reading Posted in: Autobiographical Fiction, Bildungsromans, Contemporary Literature & Fiction, Juvenile Delinquents

1933 Was a Bad Year

Trapped in a small, poverty-ridden town in 1933, seventeen-year-old Dominic Molise yearns to fulfil his own dreams of becoming an American sports hero. This teenage southpaw aspires to big leagues,… Continue Reading Posted in: Bildungsromane, Children's eBooks, Contemporary American Fiction, Depressions, Fiction

Wait Until Spring, Bandini

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Ham on Rye

Follows the path of the author's alter-ego Henry Chinaski through the high school years of acne and rejection and into the beginning of a long and successful career in alcoholism.… Continue Reading Posted in: Autobiographical Fiction, Manners And Customs, Teenage Boys

Hollywood

From iconic tortured artist/everyman Charles Bukowski, Hollywood is the fictionalization of his experience adapting his novel Barfly into a movie by the same name.Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego, is pushed to… Continue Reading Posted in: English Fiction, United States

The Brotherhood of the Grape

Henry Molise, a 50 year old, successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his aging parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, brick laying father,… Continue Reading Posted in: American Literature, Contemporary American Fiction, Family, Italian American Families, Italian Americans

West of Rome

West of Rome's two novellas, "My Dog Stupid" and "The Orgy," fulfill the promise of their rousing titles. The latter novella opens with virtuoso description: "His name was Frank Gagliano,… Continue Reading Posted in: Contemporary Literature & Fiction, Fiction

Women

Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereLow-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his… Continue Reading Posted in: Alcoholics, Black Humor (Literature), Classic American Literature, Dark Humor, Psychological Fiction

The Bandini Quartet

Possessing a style of deceptive simplicity, emotional immediacy and tremendous psychological point, among the novels, short stories and screenplays that complete his career, the author's crowning accomplishment is the Arturo… Continue Reading Posted in: Contemporary Literature & Fiction, Fiction, Novelists

Factotum

Henry Chinaski, an outcast, a loner and a hopeless dunk, drifts around America form one dead-end job to another, from one woman to another and from one bottle to the… Continue Reading Posted in: Alcoholics, Fiction, Man Woman Relationships

Post Office

Henry Chinaski is a low life loser with a hand-to-mouth existence. His menial Post Office day job supports a life of beer, one-night stands and racetracks. Lurid, uncompromising and hilarious,… Continue Reading Posted in: Letter Carriers, Man Woman Relationships

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