My Mentor, Mr. Mencken : L.A. Writer John Fante Carried on a 20-Year Correspondence With the Sage of Baltimore

Sincere good wishes,

J. Fante

March 20, 1938

Dear Mr. Mencken,

I was recently married to Joyce Smart, a Stanford girl who writes wonderful poetry and is also very remarkable in a kitchen apron. We live here in Los Angeles, where I am writing a novel ("Wait Until Spring, Bandini"), which William Soskin will print in the fall. I trust you are in good health and ever the Mencken fighting man.

With best of luck,

J. Fante

March 29, 1938

Dear Mr. Fante:

I offer you my most sincere congratulations, but have only condolence for your poor wife. She will discover soon enough that living with a literary gent is a dreadful experience. I only hope that she is never tempted to load your victuals with roach powder.

Sincerely yours,

H. L. Mencken

Aug. 20, 1938

Dear Mr. Mencken,

Bill Soskin is putting out my first novel in October. You might recall that this is the third try I have had at book writing. Such a record measures perfectly with your comment that a writer should discard his first two books.

Marriage is alright, Mr. Mencken. It keeps a man satisfied and full of big ideas. I hope my book makes a lot of money so I can travel a bit and develop my ideas. I hope you will get behind it and tell other people to buy it. If you don't like the book, then by all means warn people against it.

Sincerely,

J. Fante

Aug. 29, 1938

Dear Mr. Fante:

I needn't tell you that I'll read that novel with the greatest interest. My chaplain is instructed to pray for it diligently.

H. L. Mencken

June 18, 1951

Dear Mr. Mencken,

All I know of you these days is what I read in the papers, but no news is indeed good news and I hope this finds you over the hump. It is surely twelve years since I wrote you a letter. In that time I have acquired a wife and four children, and lost my father, who died six months ago at 72.

My new novel ("Full of Life"), the first in 10 years and the best by far, is being published by Little, Brown in the Fall. The dedication will read: For H. L. Mencken, in undiminished admiration.

Regards always,

John Fante

March 21, 1952

Dear Mr. Mencken,

I am sending you a copy of my book "Full of Life." I wrote it as a short story last Spring, but my agent got Woman's Home Companion interested in publishing an expanded version, for which they gave me a couple of thousand in advance. The magazine rejected my final version, however, and Little, Brown agreed to publish it. I peddled it to Stanley Kramer of the films for forty thousand bucks.

I trust this letter finds you well over the hump, and that the courage so lavish in your writings is there to beat back what must be a fearful siege! God be with you on the road back to victorious health.

Sincerely yours,

John Fante

March 29, 1952

Dear Mr. Fante:

Mr. Mencken, unfortunately, is still ill and it is impossible for him to write to you. But he is delighted to hear that Little, Brown has published your book. Mr. Mencken can't read the book at this time, but if he sufficiently recovers to do so sometime later in the year, he will certainly go through it with the greatest pleasure. Meanwhile, he sends his congratulations.

Rosalind Lohrifinck

Secretary to Mr. Mencken

\o7 Mencken suffered a stroke in 1948 that left him unable to speak, read or write; he died Jan. 29, 1956. Fante died from complications of diabetes on May 8, 1983.

He and Mencken never met.

Fante's letters reprinted courtesy of Joyce Fante. Mencken's letters reprinted with permission of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. \f7