About Me
Born in Denver, Colorado on 8 April 1909 to an immigrant Italian bricklayer father and an extremely religious mother, my early years were spent in poverty and the anti-Italian prejudice of the time. I attended Regis High School in Denver. My education led me to an absolute, insane determination to become a writer, so I dropped out of the University of Colorado in 1929 and escaped to California.
Working menial jobs and living in boarding houses and cheap rooms, my first success was the publication of a short storiy in H.L. Mencken's "The American Mercury" Magazine. Mencken became my friend, but he was always my mentor. By 1936, I had developed the 'Arturo Bandini' alter-ego. My first Bandini novel, "The Road To Los Angeles", was rejected by publishers, but the second, "Wait Until Spring, Bandini", was published in 1938; two reviewers listed it as 'best novel of the year'. My third novel, "Ask The Dust" – generally considered my masterpiece – was published in 1939, and the short story collection "Dago Red" in 1940. In 1940, I married the beautiful, budding poet Joyce Smart, against her family's wishes.
But my rapid rise did not continue, and my next book, an epic tale of Filipino migrant workers, "The Little Brown Brothers", was rejected. Book and short story sales did not make a living –Joyce and I eventually had four children – so I took jobs writing for Hollywood studios, which is the most disgusting job in Christ's kingdom.
Twelve years went by before another book was published, "Full of Life", an atypical work which was ironically a best-seller and a popular 1956 feature film, starring John Conte & Judy Holliday. My success in Hollywood was substantial, though many of my scripts were never produced.
My creative life was still hell for many years, and in 1955 I was diagnosed with diabetes, resulting in the amputation of a leg and then blindness in 1978. In 1980, the rouge LA street writer, Charles Bukowski, sent his publisher, Black Sparrow Press, a copy of "Ask The Dust" and demanded republication of my book as a condition of publication of further Bukowski work, the sweet bastard. The rediscovery of my work and the revival of my reputation revitalised me, and even though blind (from diabetes) and seriously ill, I dictated "Dreams From Bunker Hill" to my wife, and lived to see it published.
I died 8 May 1983. Since that time, all of my books – even those previously rejected by publishers – have been and still are in print. An acclaimed biography by Stephen Cooper was published in May of 2000, followed by "The John Fante Reader" in February 2002.
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