Fante criticism but no fiction

Well, I've been blogging on Saving Bookstores (and buying more than I should, too), but I wanted to come clean and be sure that everyone knows that I purchased the John Fante straight from the Evil Bezos himself on Friday. This was after I discovered that my otherwise wonderful university library had books of John Fante criticism but none of his novels.

Please thank Allen Ginsberg if this first thought is in fact the best one:

The parasites suck the host dry and then live to gloat about it in the stacks!

(I should come clean and admit that I checked out both books of criticism and have enjoyed some of the essays so far. In fact, if you count comp and business writing as separate strands of college English, then for some time now, I've been swinging from far more than two sides of the departmental plate.)

Well, I've read The Road to Los Angeles and Ask the Dust, so I ordered Dreams from Bunker Hill and The Brotherhood of the Grape.

If you want to learn more about John Fante, or the writing of his son Dan, then John's Ask the Dust and Dan's Chump Change are good places to start, but Dan Fante's memoir Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking, and Surviving coming later this summer, will work just as well. Maybe better.