I am Arturo Bandini
People have been talking about me this week:
Good Sunday to you! I am in full painting mode. Getting ready for some holiday paintings and such. Working on the Seraphim paintings. Here is what some people were saying about my work that was delivered to their home this week…or people….or…okay…one person. One person said it….
Gratitude and Grind!
I was so please I decided to give you the link to my exclusive gallery post and tell you about my favorite writer a bit.
When I get in my head, when I am actively being visually creative…I have difficulty being creative in print. And when this frustration jumps in and hangs over me like a a cloud blotting out my ability to accomplish my stated, self-made, commitments to you…I remind myself of the most underrated writer in American Literature: John Fante.
I scream in my head, then from my lungs: I AM ARTURO BANDINI!
I understand this phrase in my mind, but not enough to tell you about it since it resides within context of a story, actually four stories regarding the same character.. It does not appear in the book to which I am referring, but from another author who loved Fante. This writer use this phrase often in conversation and in poetry readings. His name was Charles Bukowski.
“I was a young man, starving and drinking and trying to be a writer. I did most of my reading at the downtown L.A. Public Library, and nothing that I read related to me or to the streets or to the people about me. … Then I discovered John Fante’s ‘Ask the Dust’ … It was as if the sun had gone down and come up all at once.”
“I am Bandini, Arturo Bandini! Fante was my god and I knew that the gods should be left alone, one didn’t bang at their door. Yet I liked to guess about where he had lived on Angel’s Flight and I imagined it possible that he still lived there.”
— Charles Bukowski, Foreword to Ask the Dust by John Fante
Arturo Bandini is the central figure in John Fante’s “Bandini Quartet,” a series that includes Wait Until Spring, Bandini, The Road to Los Angeles, Ask the Dust, and Dreams from Bunker Hill. These semi-autobiographical novels explore not only Bandini’s literary ambitions but also his identity, poverty, and immigrant experience, making him a cult figure in American literature.
I’m can’t tell you the catharsis this phrase gives me. I am not going to explain it, but the next time that you run into that place where the world is against you (in your own mind) and you are trying to do something special (also, in your own mind), yell it out with me: Bandini, I am Arturo Bandini!!! I think you have to believe it before you can become ‘it’.
Mostly, I wanted to tell you about my favorite guy to read. If every one John Fante the world would be a better place. I'll have attached a short bio below.
John Fante Biography
John Fante (April 8, 1909 – May 8, 1983) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel Ask the Dust (1939) about the life of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in Depression-era Los Angeles.
Fante was born in Denver, Colorado to an Italian immigrant father and an Italian-American mother. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s and began publishing stories with the help of editor H. L. Mencken, who accepted Fante’s “Altar Boy” for The American Mercury. His first published novel was Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), followed by Ask the Dust (1939). Besides novels like The Road to Los Angeles and Full of Life, Fante also wrote screenplays, collaborating with figures like William Faulkner and working steadily in Hollywood.
“He is one of the first to portray the tough times of writers in Los Angeles and has been referred to as ‘the quintessential L.A. novelist.’ He has also been cited as a precursor to Beat writers.”
“His work often delves into themes of sin, guilt, forgiveness, and the moral ambiguities of existence… Fante also made significant contributions to film as a screenwriter, with his most famous work, ‘Full of Life,’ being adapted into a screenplay nominated for an Academy Award.”
Long overshadowed in his lifetime, Fante was rediscovered in the 1980s and ’90s in part through the advocacy of Charles Bukowski, who acknowledged Fante as a literary hero and inspiration.
The Bandini Quartet (featuring Arturo Bandini)
• Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938)
• The Road to Los Angeles (written in 1936, published posthumously in 1985)
• Ask the Dust (1939)
• Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982)