Fante's Hunger

"From the bookcase behind his writing table, I pulled down a copy of Hunger by Knut Hamsun. This book, my father used to say, caused him to become a writer. I held it in my hand and flipped through the old pages. Somewhere in the middle, I discovered a sheet of typing bond that had been folded in quarters. It looked to have been used as a bookmark. It was yellow from age at the top where it had been exposed to the air.

"I unfolded the make-shift bookmark and immediately recognized the handwriting as my father's. But over and over, the signature written was Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun. Knut Hamsun. A paper was filled to the bottom of the page. The eccentricity jolted me because I'd done the same thing a hundred times, filling legal tablets with E. E. Cummings' signatures. The old man and I had things in common after all."

~~ from Chump Change by Dan Fante

Fante Published Today

Dan Fante's Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking, and Surviving is officially out and about today. I was lucky enough to read it earlier this summer, and my immediate sense was that Dan had written his best book yet.

It also got me back to exploring his father's novels, and I particularly enjoyed Dreams from Bunker Hill and The Brotherhood of the Grape.

The Less United States of Kudera is wishing Dan well at his hometown reading this Friday night at Skylight Books in Los Angeles. Here's my interview with Dan on his Bruno Dante novels, his father, alcoholics anonymous, and more.

Dan Fante interview posted at whenfallsthecoliseum.com

Dan Fante's fiction is soaked in vodka and chased down with mad dog, but he dried out to write it: http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/05/21/an-interview-with-author-dan-fante/#more-1025New. Look for his new Bruno Dante novel, 86'd, this fall.