… Pedro the mouse sat in his hole, his black eyes watching me through that time of dream and reverie.‘
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Ask the Dust | 
… Pedro the mouse sat in his hole, his black eyes watching me through that time of dream and reverie.‘
pickArturo Bandini is a writer in Los Angeles struggling to make ends meet during the Depression. He falls in love with a young Mexican woman who does not love him. She instead loves another man who does not love her. The novel is beautifully written and realized and the characters are young, full of annoying faults, but also very real. Bukowski, appropriately, writes a spirited introduction to this classic California novel.
pickEminently readable. I am glad that I finally got to read this book. The book connected with me because the places it describes such as Santa Monica, Wilshire boulevard etc., is where I spent my time when I was living in Southern California. "I am Arturo Bandini. I am a writer. I am a lover of men, and beast alike." In short, I highly recommend the book.
pickBrilliant, tragic, poetic. Fante was a master and this was surely his masterpiece.
Next up! Another book about which I know nothing. However, the fact that it has an Introduction by Charles Bukowski did pique my interest! 😃
I am a huge fan of this book , now a chance for a bargain price for some Littens.
#voicesonthewind #dust Love John Fante ! Big influence on Bukowski, writes gritty novels about working class Los Angeles,always plenty of haunted souls wandering the streets,bars,and boardinghouses near skid row and Bunker Hill, they might haunt you as well.Could be the great Los Angeles novel.
"When it was all gone, the dream of floating toward bursting stars, and the flesh returned to hold my blood in its prosaic channels, when the room returned, the dirty sordid room, the vacant meaningless ceiling, the weary wasted world, I felt nothing but the old sense of guilt, the sense of crime and violation, the sin of destruction."
"Sometimes an idea floated harmlessly through the room. It was like a small white bird. It meant no ill-will. It only wanted to help me, dear little bird. But I would strike at it, hammer it out across the keyboard, and it would die on my hands."
"Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town."
#Day6 of the #AugustPhotoChallenge for #MinimalisticCovers goes to this edition of Ask The Dust
"...murmuring of the pity of it all, the stupidity of it all, the absurdity of a hopelessly bad writer like myself buried in a cheap hotel in Los Angeles, California, of all places, writing banal things the world would never read and never get a chance to forget."
Charles Bukowski calls John Fante his God. #currentlyreading
so-so
