John Fante's literary alter ego Arturo Bandini strolls onto the opening pages of 1939's "Ask the Dust" with little to do, scarcely any money, even less to eat and a lot to say.
He is a frustrated writer, newly arrived in L.A., as arrogant as he is self-loathing, equally struck by beauty and choking on fumes, both lustful and cold. He sneers when he's offered something he wants, despite the fact that he wants it so desperately.
It is an adolescent stance, the voice of a brutal, raw, 20-year-old Holden Caulfield flying without a net.
And while grown-ups may find Bandini's swaggering contradictions obnoxious, they may be just the things that keep him alive.
Seventy years after its original publication, "Ask the Dust" appears regularly on college syllabuses, particularly those catering to freshmen. Often when introduced to such a new voice, says Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, "the students really carry that author."
In recent years, students at Harvard and Columbia, USC and Los Angeles City College, Oberlin and the University of North Florida have all picked up the story of Arturo Bandini. It might be for a course on ethnic literature or literature of the Depression or Los Angeles.
And this is where adolescent and adult meet. The way Fante brings Bandini's Los Angeles to life -- not surprisingly, Bandini both embraces and despises it -- is undeniably iconic.
"Anyone who loves L.A. struggles with it, has been obliged to reconcile the disparity between what L.A. is supposed to be and what it actually is," says Gregory Rodriguez, executive director of Zócalo Public Square and a Times op-ed columnist.
"Arturo Bandini's travails embody that collective struggle with L.A.," Rodriguez says, because "there's a love in his struggle." Rodriguez related his favorite passage:
"You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semi-tropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine."
Tonight, Zócalo hosts a panel at the Hammer Museum in Westwood at 7 celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fante's birth. David Kipen, director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts, will moderate a panel that includes Fante biographer Stephen Cooper, KCRW's Frances Anderton and Richard Schave, co-founder of the literary-historical bus tour company Esotouric.
