I'd never heard of John Fante until a year or so ago when I read something about the movie version of his novel ASK THE DUST. It sounded pretty good, so I plan to watch the movie when it comes out on DVD later this month. In the meantime I ran across this collection of his short stories at the library and decided to give it a try.
I don't normally comment on a book until I've finished it, but I'm afraid I'm giving up on this one about halfway through. The stories are highly autobiographical, with several fictional alter egos standing in for Fante, and I won't deny that they're well-written, for the most part, in a nice terse style. But nothing happens in them. They're just plotless little vignettes about the life of a would-be writer. Maybe I would have liked them better if I'd read them when I was in college. I think I had a higher tolerance for that sort of thing back then. I wanted to like Fante's work, but based on this collection, anyway, I don't care for it.
But speaking of short story collections, I picked up LEARNING TO KILL by Ed McBain, a collection of 25 crime stories written by Evan Hunter and published mostly in MANHUNT from 1952 to '57, under several different names. Now this one, as you might expect, is really, really good. I'll be alternating between it and David Morrell's BLACK EVENING (which I'm also enjoying) for the next few days.
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I didn't like ASK THE DUST when I read it a year ago in its first Finnish translation. I found it misogynist and, yeah, plotless. I wanted to scream at the guy: "Write for the pulps! Write for the pulps!" There's a would-be pulp writer included and Fante portrays him as a bore and an idiot. That said, I did find it a well-written book.
That great flimflammer L. Ron Hubbard used to brag that Dianetics was so popular they mentioned it in a Hollywood movie. Turns out the movie was Full of Life, from a book by John Fante. The star, Richard Conte, is worried about his wife's pregnancy and some of the offbeat birthing techniques she's contemplating. Says Conte, "What about Dianetics and that other nonsense." A real endorsement, that.
I got Learning to Kill in the mail yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading some of those stories.
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