By Matthew Firth

It’s a common problem. Well, maybe not common, but familiar: living in the shadow of a successful parent. It makes life tough on the kids. But what if your old man was John Fante, the legendary Los Angeles-via-Colorado writer? John Fante is, after all, the guy who inspired Charles Bukowski to stop his hoboing antics to become one of 20th century’s finest and most influential writers. The story goes, Bukowski stumbled on John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust in an L.A. library and discovered writing that was so close to the bone, honest and devoid of the flowery pretence that infected so much other modern literature, he fell in love.

Now comfortably into the sixties, Dan Fante has produced some of the best straight-shooting, from-the-gut writing in recent years. I’ll take it further and say Fante’s writing stacks up next to all the best, brawling heavyweight writers – this includes Bukowksi, Hubert Selby, Henry Miller, an ole John Fante himself. What’s more, Dan Fante is not merely the next in line, an inheritor of some bad-ass crown. His writing has its own flavour, while drawing on the fine tradition of salty American letters. There’s booze, bravado, violence, longing, sex, and rage laid bare on the pages of Dan’s books. But there’s also vulnerability, perhaps even maturity, in his work that is missing in, for example, most of Bukowski’s stuff. Maybe it’s because Dan Fante found success later in life than these other guys. Or maybe it’s because he can’t shake the fact that he’s John Fante’s boy, and, like a young boy, Dan Fante’s writing knows and shows anger but it also knows and shows openness.

Dan Fante is also a versatile writer. He is the author of three novels (Chump Change, Mooch and Spitting Off Tall Buildings, all first published in English in the UK by Canongate Books and now available in North America from Sun Dog Press); a poetry collection (A Gin - Pissing - Raw - Meat - Dual - Caburetor - V8 - Son - Of - A - Bitch From Los Angeles – Sun Dog Press); a highly-praised play (Don Giovanni – Burning Shore Press); an attractive, single story chapbook (Renewal – Bottle of Smoke Press); and a short story collection (first published in the UK by Wrecking Ball Press as Corksucker and then published in April 2006 in the US by Sun Dog Press as Short Dog, subtitled Cab driver stories from the LA streets). Translations have followed of most of his books in French, Italian, Dutch, German and other languages. This outpouring of work came to print in the last eight years.

The new book – Short Dog – is a thin but explosive collection of stories, just eight in total. As the subtitle proclaims; cab-driving is the fulcrum here. Which is no surprise as work/labour is central to Dan’s fiction. Chump Change and Mooch (esp. the latter) focus on telephone sales work. Spitting Off Tall Buildings plots twelve years of Bruno Dante’s ups and downs in New York City, including stints as a window washer, cinema usher, and cab driver. This working-man’s blues dimension further aligns Dan with Selby and Bukowski. The proletarian spirit – also present in John Fante’s work, e.g., Brotherhood of the Grape – helps give Dan Fante’s work an edge and a rare authenticity.

The main character of his novels and short stories is named Bruno Dante. Again, it’s like Bukowski and his thinly-veiled alter-ego Henry Chinaski or, more closely, Dan’s father’s Arturo Bandini character. Some readers don’t like this small degree of separation between fiction and autobiography. When it’s done well, like with Dan Fante, this style of writing can make fiction all the more powerful. I have no use for fiction where the writer hides, where the prose and plot is so generic and formulaic anyone could be the author. Good writing demands the writer bare not just his or her soul – I’ll take it further and say they should bare it all: blood, sweat, tears, semen, vaginal fluids; you name the secretion, an honest writer lets it ooze right there on the page for the reader to examine and revel in. This is Dan Fante to a T. He holds nothing back. It’s one reason his books are head and shoulders above the precious, literary drivel too much on offer in recent years.

Dan Fante also lights a fire under his prose, injecting it with energy and punch. Like Selby, not a word is compromised – the prose is swift, economical, and razor sharp:

I hated being stuck driving a cab. Since taking the gig again, my life had been drained of meaning. Stalled. The taxi business extracts the vital fluids from a man’s body twelve-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week, a drop at a time. L.A. cab driving isn’t useful work. It is human refuse relocation, the transportation of decomposing flotsam from one plastic fast food neighbourhood to the next.

From "Renewal" in Short Dog

And:

The half-juiced asshole was on his morning break, in his van at the corner of the parking lot, when one of the cabbies from the line approached the vehicle with Bob’s wife Patsy close behind. As me and half a dozen of the guys watched from a distance, Patsy unlocked the van’s sliding door with her key and pulled it open. Inside, Wifebeater Bob was being orally serviced by a hooker named Erin-Lee. It was the best hundred bucks I’d ever spent.

From "Wifebeater Bob" in Short Dog

You can read more about Fante on his website: http://www.danfante.net/

(May 2006)

*

DF: Boredom. A novel takes two or three years for me to write. Day in and day out with these characters living in my head like giant blood-sucking ticks. Ghouls. The shit drains me. I need a break after a novel so I write poems or a play.

DF: I’m actually comfortable in all the forms I use. That wasn’t always the case. The novel takes some getting used to, to get the pacing right. It really takes at least one manuscript to teach yourself how to write.

DF: Two things here. #1: Bad, tedious writing should be punishable with jail time. And #2: Fear. I’ve always been scared shitless of being boring. I really abhor tedious, unconscious, literary riffing. It’s like watching some one jerk off. At first you’re glad they’re having fun but after a while – a very short while – you’re bored to death.

DF: American publishers have zero room for first person fiction or personal narrative. Zero! I’m sure it’s invariably true for Canadians as well. Contemporary North American publishers think "blockbuster" and "best seller." The industry is run by MBAs. What’s "commercial" is all they care about. American editors are morons and capricious, bloodsucking liars. To a man. They should be taken out back and flogged twice a week for the preposterous shit they do to writers.

DF: I’m not adverse to be in the Selby-Miller-Bukowski school. There are some excellent post modern writers around today.

DF: My work was first published in France. The French really do appreciate first persona fiction. They’re goofy and anal in their literary tastes. Thank Jesus or I’d’ve gone back to Jack Daniels.

DF: The quote – I’ll paraphrase – is that a good novel should affect one like a blow to the head. Why not? The rest is rat vomit. John Updike and Saul Bellow and jerk-offs like that.

DF: No, I don’t think so. I think a good writer feels an obligation to his reader. A good book can change the world. Bullshit clogs toilets. Something like that.

DF: I quit drinking. It saved my life and my sanity.

DF: Oh, it’s okay. After a while a writer makes his own way – says what he needs to say. My name happens to be Fante. If it was Kowalski the message would still be the same … and probably the book sales too. Christ knows I’m not what you’d call a popular writer.

DF: Hell no. Whatever gets people to read my stuff is fine with me. And the difference between us as writers is pretty obvious.

DF: My old man was not famous when I was growing up. He was a hack Hollywood writer, busting his ass on rewrite deadlines to make a buck. Like so many others his screenplays were thrown and/or rewritten. So much for fame as a Hollywood writer. I never knew the John Fante of 2006. That man is a celebrity look-alike. He was long dead when I began to write.

DF: Sumerset Maugham said, "If you wish to exorcise a demon write about him." I had mountains of ka-ka with my old man. Writing a novel about him was wonderfully helpful.

DF: I’ll make this answer short: Good poet. Really good. But just a so-so novelist.

DF: I’m delighted that he’s received the recognition that was so long denied him and his work. Quite simply Pop was one of the top two or three best writers of the Twentieth Century.

DF: A writer writes about what he knows. I know about bad women and shit jobs. If they taught that stuff at college, I’d be a tenured professor.

DF: Christ no. Writing is a gift from God. Writing saved me from myself. Writing keeps me sane in a very insane world.

DF: I want people to read my stuff. If they read my stuff, they tell others and I sell more books. If I sell more books I make more money. If I make more money I can produce the plays in my drawer. I want to be a rich fat producer of the plays of Dan Fante.

Matthew Firth lives in Ottawa. His new short story collection – Suburban Pornography and Other Stories – will be published in October 2006 by Anvil Press.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada.