The Complete Works of Fante Bukowski

Author: Noah Van Sciver
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1683962850
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Book Description
Collects all three volumes of the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novels series, which skewers a self-important male literary poser. Living in a beat-up motel and consorting with the downtrodden as well as the mid-level literati, Fante Bukowski must overcome great obstacles ― a love interest turned rival, ghostwriting a teen celebrity's memoirs, no actual talent ― to gain the respect and adoration from critics and, more importantly, his father. Van Sciver has created a scathing, hilarious, and empathetic character study of a self-styled author determined that he's just one more poem (or drink) away from success. The book includes a foreward by novelist Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife), a facsimile reproduction of Bukowski's literary debut, 6 Poems (thought lost to time in the wake of a motel fire that destroyed the entire original print run), a "Works Cited" section, and a selection of "visual tributes" by over two dozen cartoonists including Nina Bunjevac, Simon Hanselmann, Jesse Jacobs, Ed Piskor, Leslie Stein, and others.

Fante Bukowski 2

Author: Noah Van Sciver
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1683960017
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Book Description
This graphic novella catches up with aspiring young writer Fante Bukowski one year later; he’s attempting to establish himself in a new city’s literary scene, self-publishing his first zine, and coming to terms with his feelings for an old friend. Fante Bukowski yearns for success as the great American novelist, and to get respect from his father once and for all. But, there’s just one problem: he still has no talent for writing.

Ask the Dust

Author: John Fante
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062013009
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
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.

West of Rome

Author: John Fante
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062013181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Book Description
West of Rome's two novellas, "My Dog Stupid" and "The Orgy," fulfill the promise of their rousing titles. The latter novella opens with virtuoso description: "His name was Frank Gagliano, and he did not believe in God. He was that most singular and startling craftsman of the building trade-a left-handed bricklayer. Like my father, Frank came from Torcella Peligna, a cliff-hugging town in the Abruzzi. Lean as a spider, he wore a leather cap and puttees the year around, and he was so bowlegged a dog could lope between his knees without touching them."

John Fante's Ask the Dust

Author: Stephen Cooper
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823287882
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
This volume assembles for the first time a staggering multiplicity of reflections and readings of John Fante’s 1939 classic, Ask the Dust, a true testament to the work’s present and future impact. The contributors to this work—writers, critics, fans, scholars, screenwriters, directors, and others—analyze the provocative set of diaspora tensions informing Fante’s masterpiece that distinguish it from those accounts of earlier East Coast migrations and minglings. A must-read for aficionados of L.A. fiction and new migration literature, John Fante’s “Ask the Dust”: A Joining of Voices and Views is destined for landmark status as the first volume of Fante studies to reveal the novel’s evolving intertextualities and intersectionalities. Contributors: Miriam Amico, Charles Bukowski, Stephen Cooper, Giovanna DiLello, John Fante, Valerio Ferme, Teresa Fiore, Daniel Gardner, Philippe Garnier, Robert Guffey, Ryan Holiday, Jan Louter, Chiara Mazzucchelli, Meagan Meylor, J’aime Morrison, Nathan Rabin, Alan Rifkin, Suzanne Manizza Roszak, Danny Shain, Robert Towne, Joel Williams

The Bandini Quartet

Author: John Fante
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782116001
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 769

Book Description
Possessing a style of deceptive simplicity, emotional immediacy and tremendous psychological point, among the novels, short stories and screenplays that complete his career, Fante's crowning accomplishment is the Arturo Bandini tetralogy. This quartet of novels tell of Fante's fictional alter-ego Bandini, an impoverished young Italian-American escaping his suffocating home in Colorado for Depression-era Los Angeles. In the beginning, it is the triple weights of poverty, father and Church that Bandini struggles under but though the physical escape is complete, the psychological imprint continues as he comes to terms with love, desire and the knowledge his talent may not be recognised.

Dreams from Bunker Hill

Author: John Fante
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062013068
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
My first collision with fame was hardly memorable. I was a busboy at Marx's Deli. The year was 1934. The place was Third and Hill, Los Angeles. I was twenty-one years old, living in a world bounded on the west by Bunker Hill, on the east by Los Angeles Street, on the south by Pershing Square, and on the north by Civic Center. I was a busboy nonpareil, with great verve and style for the profession, and though I was dreadfully underpaid (one dollar a day plus meals) I attracted considerable attention as I whirled from table to table, balancing a tray on one hand, and eliciting smiles from my customers. I had something else beside a waiter's skill to offer my patrons, for I was also a writer.

Saint Cole

Author: Noah Van Sciver
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 160699817X
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 117

Book Description
This sophomore graphic novel from Noah Van Sciver may seem like a left turn from his critically acclaimed debut graphic novel biography of Abraham Lincoln (The Hypo), yet upon closer reflection, it showcases Van Sciver’s preoccupation with pathos and the human condition. Saint Cole depicts four days in the life of a twenty-eight-year-old suburbanite named Joe, who works at a pizzeria to support his girlfriend Nicole and their infant child―and then Nicole invites her troubled mother to move into their two-bedroom apartment until she lands on her feet again. Joe reacts by retreating into alcohol: he wants out, and he's angry. He’s in a position to act rashly―and he does.

Reach for the Sun Vol. 3

Author: Charles Bukowski
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061876100
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Literary Criticism. Reach for the Sun is the third volume of Bukowski's letters from Black Sparrow Press, selected by Seamus Cooney.

The Hypo

Author: Noah Van Sciver
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1606996193
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
The debut graphic novel from Noah Van Sciver follows the twentysomething Abraham Lincoln as he loses everything, long before becoming our most beloved president. Lincoln is a rising Whig in the state’s legislature as he arrives in Springfield, IL to practice law. With all of his possessions under his arms in two saddlebags, he is quickly given a place to stay by a womanizing young bachelor who becomes his friend and close confidant. Lincoln builds a life and begins friendships with the town’s top lawyers and politicians. He attends elegant dances and meets an independent-minded young woman from a high-society Kentucky family, and after a brisk courtship, becomes engaged. But, as time passes and uncertainty creeps in, young Lincoln is forced to battle a dark cloud of depression brought on by a chain of defeats and failures culminating into a nervous breakdown that threatens his life and sanity.