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

"Wilson" by Steve Hussy

"He touched my arm and something switched inside. He was suddenly inside my skin, my fingernails in my brain. He was no worse than other bosses, nothing special, no... he was just HERE. I felt hugely disgusted by everything about him.

"The way his grey eyes didn't blink enough. His plastic hair and the tiny suits he wore. The way he squinted when he fake smiled at me. His satisfied laugh, the noise it made in his throat. The smell of coffee and shit on his breath. His look of untroubled indifference."

~~ from "Wilson" by Steve Hussy in The Savage Kick Literary Magazine: The Early Years, Issues #1, #2, #3, #4

Americans are completely full . . .

"Because he lost money there, I agree with Mr. Kim. Egyptians are full of shit.

"So are Australians, Malaysians, and Indians. For that matter, Africans are full of shit. Especially South Africans. And Americans. Americans are completely full of shit. So full of shit it flows over their borders, filling Canadians and Mexicans with shit. It dribbles all the way down the continent: Nicaraguans and Panamanians are full of shit. It bleeds over the canal: Argentina, Brazilians are full of shit. Even in Antarctica, the penguins. The fucking penguins, I tell Mr. Kim, are totally full of shit."

~~ from "Toothpick Whore" by Peter Wollman in The Savage Kick Literary Magazine: The Early Years, Issues #1, #2, #3, #4

     

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

L. A. Prose

I've recently been enjoying novels set mainly in Southern California such as The White Boy Shuffle and How To Get Into The Twin Palms. I've also been following So Cal fires and oil spills, and I'm even getting e-mail  on L.A. social-justice "gap year" programs.

So, naturally, I took it all as a sign that I was due to link and list:

Novels:

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

Chump Change by Dan Fante

Ask The Dust by John Fante

The Road To Los Angeles by John Fante

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

The Player by Michael Tolkien

How To Get Into The Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

Memoir:

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

Fante by Dan Fante

I'll add links and other books soon, but please feel free to note your own in a comment.

44 redux

In a post on Dan Fante's Point Doom, I mentioned being the same age as the narrator, and now it's as if my age is chasing me around the web. Recent findings?

The prison guard featured in a story about the most unequal place in America is 44. He works a night shift in Louisiana for $8.50 an hour.

The guy who learns the vast comic collection he has saved since childhood is worth about $500 is also 44, and now he has to find alternative funding to pay for his kids' college educations.

And the suspect in the Anderson Hall assault on an adjunct is 45.

So, to an extent, it's my age, even in food stamps lost, that's hitting me over the head on this first of November, and it doesn't feel like a good time to be a mid-forties male in America.

I better write fiction quickly from now on. . .

(Returning to this on February 3, 2014, and 1) from a student essay on a magazine advertisement I learned Jennifer Aniston is 44 2) newly crowned Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Frank Sherlock is 44! and, alas, 3) we've lost a great actor who was 46.)

(Stumbled upon on March 1, 2014, a Times Op-Ed, on what you learn in your 40s that begins, "If all goes according to plan, I’ll turn 44 soon after this column appears.")

44

Another thing I liked about Dan Fante's Point Doom is that the narrator is 44 years old when the action takes place. It made me feel like a bit less of a failure, reading about this other 44-year-old who can barely stay sober and off his mom's couch. (It should be noted that I'm writing this from a soft chair in my mother's living-room area although that isn't my permanent residence.)

Also, I'm almost certain there was a 44-year-old lurking in the shadows of the next novel I read, Dave Newman's excellent Pittsburgh novel, Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children, but I don't think it was Richard, a background character and officemate who I could relate to somewhat in his sensitivity to the meanness of an aggressive student (I should say, thankfully, no student has ever thrust a pen at my head). I also just found this great review of that book that mentioned Fante and his buddy Mark SaFranko in the first paragraph.

My daughter knows I'm 44, and for fun, she told a 66-year-old that I was 88.

Kerouac, Fante, a few others dropped in without supporting detail

So I'm thirty-five pages from the end of Point Doom, the serial-killer novel I had to step back from, and twenty-six pages from the end of The Dharma Bums, the Kerouac does Zen and backpacking I sought safety in, and I just remembered that the two have also intersected within the text, and this could be another reason Fante drove me back to Kerouac.

Early on the gritty SoCal AA mystery, Fante's protagonist notes:

Jack Kerouac once wrote that "the only people for me are the mad ones. . . who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

That's crap, but thanks, Jack. For the last few years in New York I'd tried to be one of Jack's people. In my spare time I wrote a book of poems and, before he died, I had even worked with my dad, Jimmy Fiorella, and coauthored a couple of screenplays, but eventually I discovered the truth about Kerouac, that crap, and those people: most of them wind up in the bughouse or with a mouthful of broken teeth and a jar of Xanax. Or worse. They wind up OD'd and dead. (13)

Fante has a point about romanticizing alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment, homelessness, and the rest of gritty reality that sets in when the candles burn down and away, but Kerouac of The Dharma Bums seems much more "chill" than this famous quotation suggests.

At this point, I must confess I took a break from "typing" this blog (et tu, Capote), and returned to the Kerouac, and so I'm now within twenty pages of the end.

Alas, I took two breaks, and now I'm finished the book. For the most part, I liked the mood of the book and the descriptions of nature, and even the wild, all-night party sections were okay although I'd recommend Pynchon's V for that kind of party scene.

Okay, back to Fante and then maybe Norman Rush, Philip Roth, or David Lodge comes next. These slightly higher-brow writers are ones I've also enjoyed reading in 2013, and this summer, I also read and liked very much the afore-dissed Truman Capote's "Children on their Birthdays."

Sorry I meander and weave and provide so little detail.

PS--I finished Fante's Point Doom; the final torture scenes were not nearly as harrowing as I'd anticipated (why I'd moved away from the book a few times toward the end). The ending includes the perfect set up for a sequel, but I hope Dan gets us another memoir or Bruno Dante novel. Chump Change and Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving remain my favorites.

Fante and Holic

A nice reason to be back in South Carolina is to receive a couple paperbacks in the mail.

I've been a fan of the Fantes, father and son, since finding Dan's Chump Change as a Sun Dog trade paperback years ago, so although the serial-killer angle is a bit beyond my usual, I was excited to open my preordered Point Doom. I'm already 250 pages into it, and so far, the book is a page turner with some good SoCal AA and car-sales grit and satire to it.

Also, workaholic Nathan Holic's American Fraternity Man is due to arrive at my place in a few days, and I'm proud to say that this Greek satire will be the first novel I see with my blurb on the back cover.

Interviews (Answer and Ask)

Answer:

American, British and Canadian Studies Journal
"An Interview with Alex Kudera, Author of Fight for Your Long Day" by Merritt Moseley (June, 2016)

Chronicle Vitae
"The Novelist Who Chronicles Life as an Adjunct" by William Pannapacker (January 8, 2014)

Word of Mouth (New Hampshire Public Radio)
"Fight for Your Long Day" by Rebecca Lavoie (April 4, 2013)

Foreward Reviews
“One of a Kind: A ForeWord Interview with Alex Kudera” Atticus Books Online (May-June 2011)

The Next Best Book Blog
"In Conversation: Lavinia Ludlow Interviews Alex Kudera" by Lavinia Ludlow (April 26, 2016)

This Podcast Will Change Your Life
"This Podcast Will Change Your Life is the Alex Kudera" by Ben Tanzer (August 17, 2016)

Psychology Today
“Darkly Funny Debut Novel Exposes Adjunct Abuse” by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., Creating in Flow (January 7, 2012)

Karen the Small Press Librarian
"Writer on Writer: Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera" by Dave Newman (September 8, 2013)

Clemson University
“English lecturer’s book explores the plight of the adjunct professor” by Angela Nixon, Clemson University media relations (October 11, 2011)

The Chronicle of Higher Education
“An Award-Winning Author on Adjuncts” by Isaac Sweeney, The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 1, 2011)

When Falls the Coliseum
“The Life of an Adjunct: An Interview with Novelist Alex Kudera” by Robert Anthony Watts, When Falls the Coliseum (November 1, 2010)

We Who Are About to Die
“We who are about to breed: Alex Kudera” by Patrick Wensink, We Who Are About to Die (September 27, 2011)

Smarts and Culture
“How One Author Finds an Audience: Part 1″ by Maryann Devine, smArts and Culture (October 27, 2010)

“How One Author Finds an Audience: Part 2″ by Maryann Devine, smArts and Culture (October 26, 2010)

Atticus Books
“Interview with Alex Kudera, Part 2 of 2′” by Dan Cafaro at Atticus Books Online (August 2, 2010)

“Interview with the Author of ‘Fight for Your Long Day, Part 1′” by Dan Cafaro at Atticus Books Online (July 22, 2010)

The New Dork Review of Books
“The Blogger/Novelist Relationship, with Alex Kudera (Part 2)” by Greg Zimmerman, The New Dork Review of Books (August 8, 2011)

“The Blogger/Novelist Relationship, with Alex Kudera (Part 1)” by Greg Zimmerman, The New Dork Review of Books (August 4, 2011)

And Ask:

"Chinese Gucci: The Interview": Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, The Less United States of Kudera,
May 12, 15, 19 and 22, 2020

"An Interview with Rebecca Schuman" When Falls the Coliseum, April 13, 2017

"Bay Area Blues: An Interview with Lavinia Ludlow" JMWW, February 29, 2016

"Writer on Writer: Part Two, Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman" Karen the Small Press Librarian, September 16, 2013

"An Interview With Nancy Peacock" plus Part 2, and Part 3, The Less United States of Kudera, March 31, 2013 to April 3, 2013

"John Warner on Frederick Exley" When Falls the Coliseum, May 13, 2011

"The Exley Influence: A Riff Between Two Authors 'Falling Inward'" Atticus Books Online, February 25, 2011

"Exley, Clarke, and Eleanor Henderson" When Falls the Coliseum, November 9, 2010

"Interview With Mark SaFranko" When Falls the Coliseum, October 19, 2010

"Interview With Dan Cafaro of Atticus Books" When Falls the Coliseum, August 9, 2010

"An Interview With Lee Konstantinou" When Falls the Coliseum, May 13, 2010

"An Interview With Jean-Philippe Toussaint" When Falls the Coliseum, April 19, 2010

"Returning 'Home': An Interview With Jayne Anne Phillips" The South Carolina Review, Spring 2010 (link to table of contents but not the interview)

"Interview With Olga Gardner Galvin" When Falls the Coliseum, June 22, 2009

"An Interview With Author Dan Fante" When Falls the Coliseum, May 21, 2009

"The Writing Life Starring Iain Levison" The Less United States of Kudera, May 4, 2009

"An Interview With Cassendre Xavier" The Less United States of Kudera, March 15, 2009

"Don Riggs on Writers and Writing" The Less United States of Kudera, March 9, 2009

dollar store realism

If Raymond Carver's dirty realism is K-Mart realism, then perhaps Barry Graham's The National Virginity Pledge could be called Dollar Tree realism. His short, spunky stories arrived in my mail slot with Ben Tanzer's This American Life. Tanzer hasn't told me that his new marketing strategy is to get sued by NPR and made famous thusly, but his title story does tackle this concern in part. I did get a chance to tell Ben that his productivity and pace of publication is amazing. He's written a lot of books. And he just burst through the doors of Powell's and got all of his paperbacks on the shelf. He's an animal. I fear for his wife.

But back to Graham, a couple writers his dirty themes and spare prose remind me of would be Dan Fante and Mark SaFranko, and both of these guys were recently seen in the cyberworld. SaFranko's No Strings Attached, a new novel, arrives this fall from Black Coffee Press:

And Dan Fante was found signing books in Barcelona this week:

And then it was time for writers all over the world to have a relaxing weekend that includes at least one good, long nap. I'll go out on a limb and call that a code for success.

Fight for Your Long Nap!

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.

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.

delillo on bellow

Their names share four letters, split between vowels and consonants, and now Delillo has won a PEN award in the more ashen man's name. For lifetime achievement defined by quantity of good to great novels, could there be a post-war American writer greater than these two? Don't give me Roth and don't tell me Bellow isn't only post-war.

Delillo I've read: Americana, End Zone, Great Jones Street, Ratner's Star, Players, The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, and Cosmopolis. (I think that's it.) I've also read Delillo's somewhat famous essay on 9/11 as well as a short story or two.

Bellow I've read: Seize the Day, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, The Dean's December, Ravelstein, and perhaps a short story or two. A short piece by Bellow I like is his introduction to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, where, to me, he makes it clear that he does not necessarily see things the same way. I'm not sure that the university is still a place where people with even strongly opposing political views might support each other's work or at least respect its place in print. (Well, I guess these days everyone is too busy with their teaching overloads, publication schedules, and "specializations" to read each other's work. And that would more likely be online, yes, indeed.)

OK. In conclusion, I've read more Delillo than Bellow (and I'm willing to wager that you have too) although Bellow would seem to be a more significant influence in my own literary efforts, if either of these guys is any kind of influence at all. (Well, I guess you can't have an alienated male protagonist or antihero in an American novel without implicitly referencing these two.) I've tried to describe Fight for Your Long Day as a cross between novels by Saul Bellow and Dan Fante, but I'm not sure it would be understood that way, and I doubt many of my readers will have read much by those two anyway. (This does not imply I have "many readers" as of this blogging.) I'd probably be better off comparing it to movies. . . ah, humanity.

As an aside on Italian American novelists, I should note that for me, Don Delillo completely kicks Richard Russo's ass--although Russo is said to be a wonderful person, and Straight Man is fun--and is the undisputed lone heavyweight in the category although Dan and John Fante would be my sentimental favorites on this list and I'm pulling for Dan Fante's buddy Mark SaFranko (who was kind enough to let me know soon after this post that in fact he is not Italian; okay, we'll handle that another time but keep his name under the bright lights of USK) as well as two of the guys Dan Cafaro has signed up for publication at Atticus Books. Maybe we'll Jew-list another day. Oy vey.

(Mark's correction just reminded me of a thought I had on the way to the library. Saul Bellow was born in Quebec.)

UPDATE 03/04/2023: Only this past summer, I read Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, and at some point after I wrote this blog entry, I read The Adventures of Augie March.

Interview with Mark Safranko

My interview with novelist Mark Safranko has arrived at http://www.whenfallsthecoliseum.com/. Hating Olivia looks like strong stuff but could be worth it.

Dan Fante and Iain Levison

Dan Fante and Iain Levison both have new books already here or coming soon. Fante's new novel, 86'd, was published on Monday, September 22, 2009, and Levison's novel, How to Rob an Armored Car is due out on October 1. Links to my brief interviews with both writers are found below:

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

http://kudera.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-life-starring-iain-levison.html

These two URLs lead directly to the title on the virtual shelf of our commander-in-book:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Rob-Armored-Iain-Levison/dp/1569475997/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253733814&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/86d-Novel-P-S-Dan-Fante/dp/0061779229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253734440&sr=1-1

As you know, you can buy books from sources other than amazon.com, and it is probably a good idea to do so if you want those sources to continue to exist. Having added that bit of op-ed, I should also now admit that I am at least 30 miles from a brick-n-mortar store that might stock either title, and so I just purchased one of them from Jeff Bezos and his shareholders along with a first novel titled Remedies from Philadelphia's own Kate Ledger.

Happy literature.