The other connection between the two authors is that John Fante (who died in 1983) was one of America's forgotten writers, and Bukowski was the one who re-discovered his work. In a paragraph contained in Women there's a clear reference to Fante's Ask the Dust in which B. says, (I'm rephrasing): When I started reading that book I felt a miracle, big and unattended, had happened.
Arturo Bandini was to John Fante what Henry Chinaski was to Charles Bukowski. Their alter-egos, their extreme selves.
In my opinion, both books are beautiful, nostalgic, and harsh "road-trips", there's a lot of wandering, but, instead of exploring the whole country, these characters always return to LA, they can't escape the dust.
Moreover, both men are tragic, and cruel, and funny, and, in the end, they're just dreamers who live for writing and for a one-night-stand affair. Ask the Dust's prologue is just splendid (remember to read it at the end of the book), it shows the great capacity of a writer who is confident about his character because he is the character himself and about the story because it's his story.
Both wanderers walk on their inventors' steps, and the endings,one more poetic the other more brutal, are, in a word, just authentic.
Favourite Quotes:
Women, Charles Bukowski
“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”
“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”
“I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, “I’m going to pee..”’ hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together”
“And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.”
“There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.”
Ask The Dust, John Fante
“You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.”
“Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?”
“Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!”
“I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living”
“Arturo Bandini: -What does happiness mean to you Camilla?
Camilla: -That you can fall in love with whoever you want to,
and not feel ashamed of it.”
“Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets.”
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