rare titles

Enjoy a signed Dan Fante Chump Change or "as new" hot indie titles. 

beach reads

Enjoy the sun with a novel or two unless an eclectic mix of poetry and fiction suits you.

This is not the signed copy linked to above.

signed, rare debut novel

Scarcity determines value.

"As New" Chump Change

Make an offer on the original English-language trade paperback of Dan Fante's debut novel. It's an extremely rare "as new" edition of Chump Change from Sun Dog Press.

Mark and Dan

 

Mark SaFranko's Nowhere Near Hollywood and Dan Fante's Chump Change

a happier life

"I didn't want Rocco to finish his life on the back seat of my car surrounded by hack fiction, cigarette butts and empty potato chip bags. I wanted him to die at Jonathan Dante's home in Malibu. He'd lived his life near the smell of his master and the things that were familiar—on the carpet in the old man's den where he would snooze while my father banged away on his typewriter hour after hour, where the sweetness of the ocean's sound and the taste of the salted air would remind him of a happier life."

~~ from Chump Change by Dan Fante

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

Life got away from me

"We drank coffee together standing in the kitchen. He wanted to know what had happened to me. Why had I landed in the nut ward? He was a very intense guy, and his directness came from a fear that what I had, might be inherited by him too.

"I had not planned to be crazy, I said. Arrests for lewd practices in public were things that happened when I drank. I'd not planned on being a degenerate. Life got away from me. Out of hand. I couldn't figure it out either . . .

"We talked about him too. Fab was proud that he had put himself through college and into grad school mostly from working in a supermarket. When the old man had gotten sick and his only income had been his Social Security and Writers Guild Pension, my brother had paid for his education by himself. At one store, working his way up from box boy to checker to assistant manager. Union wages. Vacations. Dental benefits. Six years at USC. The CPA exam."

~~ from Chump Change by Dan Fante

old friends arrive by mail

 

Dan Fante, writer

The writer Dan Fante joined his father John Fante this week. Both were novelists of Los Angeles championed in France for their "down and out in America" themes. Dan was published in French before he was published in English, and his best works were Chump Change and the family memoir, Fante. Mostly off the beaten path as an adult, Dan was teaching at the UCLA extension school for writers in some of his last years. Possibly his father would be seen as the more "important" literary figure (Ask the Dust, Brotherhood of the Grape, Dreams of Bunker Hill, screenplay credits including one for Algren's Walk on the Wild Side), and Dan was quite proud of his father's accomplishment and his Italian heritage. Late in life, Dan was partnering with his native province in Italy and getting his works translated into Italian. I discovered Chump Change in a Barnes and Noble across the country, back when small-press titles had a shot of sneaking into the chain stores, even if the authors weren't "local." Fifteen years later it would be far more difficult to learn of writers like the Fantes although since I found Chump Change in Philly, I've seen that Dan has had most of his books reprinted by a New York big, and almost all of John's titles have stayed in print and seem to be selling as well as ever. Famously, it was Charles Bukowski who discovered John Fante in the Los Angeles library, and would help revive interest in the author years later. They're all gone now, but not forgotten.

Guardian obituary: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/25/dan-fante-underground-writer-legacy-chump-change-mooch

My interview with Dan in 2009: http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/05/21/an-interview-with-author-dan-fante/

Dan Fante articles in the L.A. Times: http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/dan-fante

Other obituaries: 

Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/article/daniel-smart-dan-fante-february-19-1944-november-23-2015

Italoamericano: http://www.italoamericano.org/story/2015-12-11/dan-fante