A Review of Ask The Dust by John Fante

One morning, a couple of weeks ago, a slim package from Amazon dropped through my door. I was just recovering from my knee operation and thus struggled to bend down to pick it up. Having done so I slid it onto the kitchen worktop assuming it was something else my wife had ordered. It was only when she came in from work that I was told it was actually for me. But I hadn't ordered anything. I opened it anyway and there was Ask The Dust by John Fante. I hadn't heard of either him or his book. Perplexed, I read the back of it and saw there was a Foreward by Charles Bukowski - one of my favourite authors. Curiouser and curiouser! The mystery was solved when I noticed a small typed note in amongst the packaging:

"Get well cards are for girls. Thought you might like this. I love it. Dave"

Now that's a great mate for you!

Ask The Dust was first published in 1939 when the author was thirty years old. It tells of struggling writer, Arturo Bandini (Fante's alter-ego much in the same way as Ray Smith is in The Dharma Bums for Jack Kerouac), who has moved to Los Angeles to make a go of his writing career. It is a first-person narrative story whose style is very similar to that of Bukowski who once declared: Fanti is my god! In fact Arturo Bandini and Henri Chinowski (Bukowski's alter ego) could be at the very least brothers, if not twins. It also stands comparison to Kerouac's Tristessa in terms of the main character's fascination with a woman with whom he believes he is in love; yet it is what she represents that truly holds the fascination.

Arturo Bandini is in his early twenties when the book begins and we are guided through various events, none of which are particularly dramatic, through his eyes. It is fair to say that at no time does he come off with any real credit. He is pompous, selfish, downright unpleasant at times, a bully and a liar. And the store that he holds in his (at the start of the novel) only published short story - The Little Dog Laughed - would make every fledgeling author squirm! I know I did! I believe that every independant author just trying to make their way, like me, would get a lot from Ask The Dust. Arturo has an unstinting belief in his talent and on one level you have to admire him for it. Times are very hard, living off free oranges and stolen milk and yet he still believes that one day he will make it as an author. He idolises his agent as being the one man who has spotted his genius and pours scorn on all those that don't recognise it. The only person ever to have told him they had read his short story is a fourteen year old girl whom he implores to read it aloud to him whilst he lays on his bed. He then claims to be closer to her age than he looks before she is whisked away by her mother.

So on one level this is the story of a struggling writer - his loves, ambition, confusion and daily worries. On another it is wonderful social commentary about how Los Angeles has sucked the life out of all those who live within its environs.

Ask The Dust is achingly funny at times but in a really poignant way. The final scene is wonderful and the whole book, from the manner in which it came into my hands, to the delightful prose, I found to be an absolute delight. As someone who recognises many of the traits inherent in Arturo Bandini I feel both sustained in my belief that I will one day make writing my full-time profession and relieved that were it not for people like my mate Dave the chances of  my appropriating the more unedifying elements of Bandini's character are thankfully remote though only ever just below the surface.

A Review of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Although The Dharma Bums was published in 1958, the semi-fictionalised events it describes all occurred prior to the publication of On The Road a year earlier. On The Road was itself written in 1951 taking years to find a publisher. The interesting thing therefore about The Dharma Bums is that it describes Jack Kerouac (Ray Smith in the novel) before the fame of On The Road struck. And it literally did strike both with a suddenness and a force from which he would never truly recover.

The Dharma Bums is very much a novel about someone searching for a foothold in life, a way of being, of expressing yourself that is both true and honest but does not entirely lead to alienation from society. Jack Kerouac, in many of his novels, although this one in particular, is constantly battling with his yearning for spirituality and peace against the reckless nature that would ultimately lead to his death in 1969 at the age of 47.

Although narrated by Ray Smith (Jack Kerouac), the central character of the novel is Japhy Ryder (poet Gary Snyder). Japhy represents all that Ray strives to be - a woodsman, a mountain-climber, entrenched in Buddhism, a revered poet - and he still gets all the girls! Ray is forever following, literally, in Japhy's footsteps but he is never quite able to emulate him. Even when they make their beautifully described attempt to climb Matterhorn, Ray stops a hundred feet short whilst Japhy dances around on the peak.

When Ray is not with Japhy, he spends time hitch-hiking back to his mother and whilst there plays the part of the deep thinker, sleeping under the trees, going for long walks and trying to get his family to understand why lives the way he does. Ultimately his reasoning comes across as shallow and entirely out of context with the daily struggles of his sister and brother-in-law. Even when riding the rails or hitching lifts, Ray invariably has money in his pocket should he get tired of the travelling. And he is not always the most grateful of passengers, becoming angry on one occasion, having hitched a ride, when a mother gets baby food on his new rucksack. The whole dichotomy so familiar to so many of us is the putting into practice the spritual and humane beliefs we hold to be true. In Japhy Ryder we have someone who is able to do that more often than not. In Ray Smith we have a man who just falls short, a voyeur, a man who won't allow himself to fully let go.

As in Jack Kerouac's life, Ray Smith veers from veneration of the bodhisattva life-style to being a drunk, replete with paranoia and obnoxious traits that isolate himself from the very people he is trying to emulate.

When I first read The Dharma Bums many years ago I was influenced hugely by the idea of living a simple life, appreciating the wonders of natural beauty that abound everywhere we look and the possibility that an existence based on peace and tolerance was possible even in the modern society of tension and commerce. Reading it again now though it is the character of Ray Smith that really stands out. For in many ways I resemble him more than perhaps any other character in any other book I have read. And that is humbling to admit, believe me.

So The Dharma Bums is a special book for me. It began, when I first read it, a train of thought that led to me writing Tollesbury Time Forever - a novel about forgiveness and hope. Now it has given me the impetus to no longer be that voyeur who gives up a hundred feet short of the summit. Jack Kerouac died at 47 - lonely, shot to pieces, full of self-admonishment, having written the most honest, beautiful books I know. I'm nearly 43. When I go it won't be having drowned in a pool of cheap red wine, guilt and what might-have-beens - it will be because I have fallen off the mountain-top dancing like a crazy fool.

Where once I tried to emulate Jack Kerouac as he tried to emulate Gary Snider, I'm now just going to be me. I just wonder how long that will last - paticularly with the three bottles of wine for a tenner deal still on at the corner shop...