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Title: Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante ISBN: 0-87685-528-1 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: March, 1982 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: another wonderful job by john fante
Comment: you don't realize just how good john fante is until after you've read (better yet: attempted to read) so much bad writing our nation's bookshelves are filled with. i'd read this one years before and remembered it as being a decent read, etc. but there i was the other night, looking for something to read; i needed a book fix, i had to have something to read. reached up for dreams from bunker hill and began my second reading of it...stayed up all night getting into this warm, compassionate tale. fante had heart, intelligence and the story of old time hollywood moves right along. stayed with it until i was finished about 5 a.m.
fante makes it look easy, but quite a few of us know better: good writing is never easy to write or come by.
we thank buk for making us aware of fante and wish fante's recognition had happened earlier in his life...but you know what they say about wishful thinking... at least people are reading him now, as well as his son dan. i dare say, here and now, dan's prose is even stronger and better than bukowski. try either fante and you'll see what i'm talking about.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fante's Best
Comment: Many Fante fans will vehemently disagree that this is his best work. That is probably because they are really Bukowski fans, and Bukowski liked Ask the Dust better. Of course, many Buk fans are as conformist as anyone, and they now follow him blindly as Pat Boone fans probably do Mr. Boone. These are the same people who think Buk could do no wrong (then what was up with Women?). I say that as a huge Buk fan, but as somebody who is not looking for a hero, but a good writer (which is what Buk was).
Ask the Dust is great, and it has a better ending, but Dreams of Bunker Hill is Fante's best work. Here he lays bare the soul of a struggling writer in a world that does not care one bit for talented people. He gets a glimpse into the sophistication of Hollywood, and sees it for its falsity. The scene where he confronts Sinclair Lewis had me laughing for hours. And the strange relationship he has with his landlady is Fante at his best: love can be such a strange thing that it is wonderful.
Fante should get much more academic notice, as should his follower Buk. What could help would be to realize that he, like Buk, was not always a "party-down wild man." Fante, like Buk, was VERY well steeped in the classics. He was incredibly widely read: from Anderson to Schopenhaur. Writing was hard work to him. For all the posers out there who want to be writers without hard work, please stop using Fante (and Buk's) name in vain. He's just better than you are or will be. When you realize his stuff please realize that the ease with which it reads is related to the difficulty with which it was composed.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fictionalized account of author's youth in Los Angeles
Comment: I'm a big fan of Fante's, and I would only like to clear up one point that the other reviewers have given conflicting information on. Although about Fante's alter ego in his youth, this book WAS dictated to Fante's wife, Joyce, when he was ill and blind with diabetes. It is, as far as I know, the last thing he wrote before he died.
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Title: The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante ISBN: 0876856490 Publisher: Black Sparrow Press Pub. Date: December, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Ask the Dust by John Fante, Charles Bukowski ISBN: 0876854439 Publisher: Black Sparrow Press Pub. Date: June, 1980 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Wait Until Spring, Bandini by John Fante ISBN: 0876855540 Publisher: Black Sparrow Press Pub. Date: April, 1983 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante ISBN: 0876857268 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: 1933 Was a Bad Year by John Fante ISBN: 0876856555 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: September, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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