Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante

by Stephen Cooper

Book Overview

In the definitive biography of John Fante, English and film studies professor Stephen Cooper explores the life of a man whose muse was Los Angeles. If ever a writer presented an enigma to the literary... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865475547
• ISBN13: 9780865475540
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 406 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Great Read and Valuable Contribution

I hope the interest in "Ask the Dust" (reprint and Hollywood film) will send many readers to this excellent biography. If you want to learn more about Fante and the Los Angeles literary and screenwriting scene of his era, this book is a gold mine. Recognition came late for Fante, and it wouldn't have come at all without Charles Bukowski's advocacy, but this biography, Robert Towne's feature film, and the Independent Lens documentary that aired recently on PBS ("A Sad Flower in the Sand") are helping to rectify the critical neglect. Two comments on the other reviews. Yes, it will be useful in the classroom. I just taught "Ask the Dust" in a course at San Francisco State University, and this work was a huge help. And to those who could do without the endnotes, they were indispensable for me as I researched the life of Fante's friend Carey McWilliams.

Stephen Cooper delivers, John Fante in the fullness of life

Lest anyone believe the dribble of the last reviewer who gave Cooper's biography one star, I thought I'd send in a review that at least strives for honesty, to say nothing of accuracy, which that other reviewer made no attempt to show. Stephen Cooper's biography of John Fante is a thoroughly enjoyable if occasionally painful read. Enjoyable because he presents a well-rounded picture of the man who penned such American classics as: Ask The Dust, The Brotherhood of the Grape, My Dog Stupid, Dreams From Bunker Hill, and others, including a number of very fine and moving short stories. Painful, because John Fante certainly was a flawed human being, as this biography clearly shows. To complain that Fante drank, or was lazy, or abused his wife, etc. is silly. What, we can or should only read books by people who are saints? If that's the criteria for what writers we read then there'd be nothing to read on the fiction shelves by either men or women. Should I refrain from reading Claire Boothe Luce or Dorothy Parker because they were less than perfect people? Should I dump my Dostoyevsky books simply because he treated everyone monstrously, or my Dickens, because he was a lousy father and husband? I'm sorry to destroy the illusions of the simpleton who wrote that review, but writers are sometimes petty, self-centered, back-biting, bores, many of whom drink to excess or gamble, or cheat, or womanize, etc., etc. If you want nice problem-free people to emulate go for film stars or musicians, or jocks, right? Maybe certain people shouldn't read biographies, but can instead continue to march along the primrose path believing idiocies like the writers they admire are as perfect as the works they create. For this person to state something like: "There is nothing new or interesting here, not even a great work of art to point to and wonder. Cooper looks behind the curtain of Fante's existence, finding that whatever wizard we had imagined there had long ago crumbled to dust." --I'm sorry, but that's not even half intelligent, it's sheer wanton stupidity. Yeah, that's why John Fante has admirers from John Fowles all the way down. Cooper's book gives us the externals that formed John Fante the writer. If that is uninteresting to the previous reviewer, that's sad. That he or she doesn't appreciate Fante work, and feels the need to attack it is pathetic. Fante will long outlast you, and I'd sure hate to see what lies on your bookshelves. Fante's books continue to sell and be reprinted, here in the U.S and in Europe. While there's no accounting for taste, there's no accounting for its absence in this case. Set Fante beside anyone who wrote in the 1930s or 1940s-Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc.-and you will see that Fante's writing is not dated, but is incredibly fresh. And while he writes a clean simple prose, at the same time there is poetry there, too. How many writers can you name who are capable of accomplishing that? Add Fante's humor, and you have writing t

Fante will find his way into the classroom

Cooper is an elegant writer in his own right. He brings new light to Fante's life and work. After reading his stimulating biography, any readers unfamiliar with Fante will immediately be drawn to his novels and readers already familiar with Fante will get the urge to re-read and re-think an author who, with the help of Cooper, will eventually find his way into the classroom.

A Long Overdue Look At The Life Of John Fante

Stephen Cooper discovered "Ask the Dust" when he was 25 and like most who have encountered the novel, was profoundly effected. A quarter century later, he lays some thorny roses at the grave of John Fante with a clear eyed look at the man who's bifurcated personality produced some of the most raw and beautiful prose of the 20th. Century, as well as countless drunken, destructive rages. Cooper has studied his subject exaustively and with the assistance of Fante's widow Joyce, he gives us our first look at a life and a talent that spun away from it's early, hungry promise to the deadly distractions of Hollywood, the links and the drinks. Fante's life, in many ways, is full of more rugged pathos and sour beauty than that of the Bandini persona that he wove through his too few novels. Cooper has done a magnificent job as the first biographer of John Fante but it is a testament to this uniquely complicated man that it should not suffice as the only volume on the shelf.