Ask the Dust
Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres...
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Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780060822552 (0060822554)
ASIN: 60822554
Publish date: February 7th 2006
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Pages no: 165
Edition language: English
Series: The Saga of Arthur Bandini (#3)
I became aware of this awhile back -- curious to me that Fante's not more well-known. I snatched a copy up for fifty cents when I went to return a library book and found that their used book sale was opening up fifteen minutes later. Even after working retail on the Main Line for three years, I stil...
I don't think I have the right adjectives to review this book. This slim novel is dense but there is not a superfluous word or turn of phrase. Ask the Dust is all at once a tragic love story; a cultural examination; a criticism of Catholicism; and the sad plight of immigrants trying to achieve the A...
Fante's writing is top-notch, but in the end, the plot and characters are too B-movie for me to really get invested. Definitely worth the read, especially if you are a fan of the Beats.
An unreliable narrator, Arturo Bandini, relates his highest accomplishments (writing short stories and a novel) and his deepest failures (finding love). His piques of racism and misogyny are followed by moments of tenderness and compassion for the same woman. He’s a man hard to admire, yet equally ...
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