The Road to Los Angeles

by John Fante

Book Overview

I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead. My first job was ditchdigging a short time after I graduated from high school. Every night I couldn't sleep from the pain in my back. We were digging an excavation in an empty lot, there wasn't any shade, the sun came straight from a cloudless sky, and I was down in that hole digging with two huskies who dug with a love for it, always laughing and telling...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0013NK31O
• ISBN13: 9780876856499
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining, Bukowski-esque Homage to 30's LA

John Fante's youthful Arturo Bandini is an intriguing, bizarre and absolutely unique character. Growing up poor, in East L.A., Bandini endures a succession of menial jobs to help support his mother and sister. His odd, self-taught upbringing gives him a huge vocabulary and the willingness to employ it at a moment's notice. Bandini is insecure, shy, well-spoken and monumentally unfit for adulthood._The Road to Los Angeles_ describes Bandini's rites of passage and inevitable coming of age. Covering his relationships with "hidden women", his attempt at a first novel and a spate of unabashed cruelty towards various creatures, the protaganist is humorous but apparently teetering on the brink of insanity.Bandini's BB-gun-fueled "war with the crabs" is a wonderfully comic extravaganza of unwarranted viciousness... "I shot crabs all that afternoon, until my shoulder hurt behind the gun and my eyes ached behind the gunsight. I was Dictator Bandini, Ironman of Crabland. This was another Blood Purge for the Fatherland. The had tried to unseat me, those damned crabs... had actually questioned the might of Superman Bandini! Well, they were going to get a lesson they would never forget. This was going to be the last revolution they'd never attempt, by Christ."Fante is eminently readable and this book was particularly enjoyable. And, yes, I am a fan of Charles Bukowski as well ;-).

Outrageous Comedy

"The Road to Los Angeles" is Fante's first novel. He began it in 1933 and finished in 1936. The publishers rejected it and it was published about 50 years later by Black Sparrow press after the authors death. This is Fante's best novel and one of the funniest most enjoyable books I have read to date. Reading this is a wonder and a revelation, the prose raw and fresh, honest and hilarious. The story follows Arturo Bandini, a prideful fool of an eighteen year old as he makes his way in 1930s California. He lives with his mother and sister, works in a cannery, and aspires to be a great writer. Arturo has read too many books and has got hold of some bad philosophy. Fante uses this to poke fun at Nietsche's and Hitler's "superman" weltanschauung (worldview), which the befuddled Arturo pontificates every chance he gets. At the point when Nietzsche loses his mind he is said to have been watching a man whip an old horse, Nietzsche burst into tears and hugs the horse weeping uncontrollably. Fante uses this when in the book Arturo sees an old hunchback woman smiling in the park, his eyes drenced he carries her basket for her. After feeling pure empathy for her life and pain he says goodbye to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and runs home and apologizes to his mother. This doesn't last of course and he goes back to being the same old Arturo. Early in the novel he enacts a hilarious though disturbing blood purge ,"for the good of the Fatherland", against some crabs he imagined had questioned the might of Superman Bandini. Later in the book at times when he is down on himself he refers to himself as a crabkiller. There is much, much more. Please read this marvel of a novel by John Fante.

Better than Bukowski

This is, by far, my favorite of the Arturo Bandini ramblings. This book is loaded with interesting characters, wit and self-deprecation. It is as easy to read as White Russians are to drink. Ask The Dust and 1933 Was A Bad Year are very good and pretty good, but The Road To Los Angeles should be included in the short list of "modern" American classics.

Unusual point-of-view

This book kept me reading!Fante kept me in the peculiar mindset of the main character, Arturo, where Arturo consciously decides to present himself to the world as a jerk; but at the same time Arturo is reflective enough for me to feel sorry for him at times.Fante writes in that gap between who we REALLY are, and how we decide what we're comfortable with showing everyone else.The Road to Los Angeles is accessible, and doesn't hammer the reader with convoluted views about how the world ought to be.Currently, I am reading Ask the Dust. Many people who've critiqued both books by Fante seem to like Ask the Dust much more. I was totally engaged by The Road to LA. Ask the Dust is a decent enough book; but The Road to LA is without question my favorite of the 2.

An American Classic

Normally a harsh critic of contemporary American literature, I was stunned by this book and by Fante's inimitable talent. Words that come to mind when I think of his work are: raw, genuine, sharp, to-the-bone. The absence of stylizing is a welcome relief, like going from a stuffy, closed room into the cold night air. Fante reminds me of an unself-conscious, unfettered Hemingway. His main character, Arturo, is wonderfully self-absorbed, but the writing is not. And that combination drills into the human character without fear or shame. Fante makes no excuses for his alter-ego; he strips him of any of the dignity of privacy. And we are granted a rare view of our own humanness. I first read Fante in 1985. After "Ask the Dust" I wanted more of his work but couldn't find it on the east coast. I contacted a book broker and had the good fortune to acquire a lettered first of this one...something I would normally never bother to do. But this book is, without a doubt, an American classic...as is Fante himself.