Ask The Dust

Arturo Bandini is a twenty-year-old Italian American who moves to Los Angeles during the Great Depression to begin a writing career.While the story is told from his point of view, the narrator retains a degree of ironic distance from his younger self, giving the narration of this frequently devastating story a comic overtone. The son of Italian immigrants, Arturo grew up in Colorado and moved to California in the hope of overcoming his impoverished, immigrant background and becoming a great American writer. At the beginning of the novel, Arturo’s greatest accomplishment is the publication of his first short story, “The Little Dog Laughed.” It was published by the distinguished New York editor, J. C. Hackmuth (based on Fante’s real-life mentor, H. L. Mencken), and he believes himself to have great potential as an author because of it.Despite constantly bragging about his greatness as a writer, Arturo is clearly deeply insecure, especially about his lack of sexual experience and his ethnic background as an Italian American. When he arrives in Los Angeles, he has never had sex and fears that his inexperience will keep him from developing as a writer. Although he considers himself an American, his Italian looks and last name keep him from blending in with white Americans.