Fiction. John Fante recalls his first novel, recently republished by Black Sparrow Press: 'Now that I am an old man I cannot look back upon WAIT UNTIL SPRING, BANDINI without losing its trail in the past. Sometimes, lying in bed at ni...

A struggling writer lodging in a seedy LA hotel, Arturo Bandini falls in love with Camilla Lopez, a elusive, unstable Mexican waitress, and they embark on a strange and strained love-hate relationship that inexorably descends into mad...

My first collision with fame was hardly memorable. I was a busboy at Marx's Deli. The year was 1934. The place was Third and Hill, Los Angeles. I was twenty-one years old, living in a world bounded on the west by Bunker Hill, on the ...

In the definitive biography of John Fante, English and film studies professor Stephen Cooper explores the life of a man whose muse was Los Angeles.

Fante, who died in 1983, is receiving some belated recognition for novels like Ask the Dust and Wait Until Spring, Bandini. His biographer, Stephen Cooper, has unearthed 18 previously uncollected stories that Fante wrote over 27 years...

Henry Molise, a 50 year old, successful writer, returns to the family home to help with the latest drama; his aging parents want to divorce. Henry's tyrannical, brick laying father, Nick, though weak and alcoholic, can still strike fe...

I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead. My first job was ditchdigging a short time after I graduated from high school. Every night I couldn't sleep from the pain in my back. We we...

West of Rome's two novellas, "My Dog Stupid" and "The Orgy," fulfill the promise of their rousing titles. The latter novella opens with virtuoso description: "His name was Frank Gagliano, and he did not belie...