Chapter Four
The Death of Ask the Dust

John Fante wrote his first story collection, Dago Red, and his fine novel Ask the Dust during his first years of marriage to my mom. Both books were well reviewed and the old man’s stock as a respected writer seemed to be on the rise. Then came the whammy. In 1939, the year Dust was released, his publisher, Stackpole Sons, made the dumb and costly blunder of publishing Hitler’s Mein Kampf without the author’s permission. The promo money that should have gone to publicize Ask the Dust was spent in New York City courtrooms fighting a protracted lawsuit with the Führer. The novel would sell fewer than three thousand copies and then go to sleep for the next forty years. John Fante went back to writing screenplays, but rage, alcohol, and depression were beginning to take their toll. It has been written that bad luck played a major part in the near demise of my father’s literary career. Certainly that is true, but his bad temper, intolerance, and nasty tongue didn’t help either.

It was during this time that my father paid a serious price for his boozing. John and Joyce were living in what was then the tiny coastal town of Manhattan Beach. Pop had been drinking heavily as usual, fell asleep at the wheel, and crashed his car into a telephone pole. He was hospitalized for several days with a crushed cheekbone and a deep gash to his arm. Years later, when we talked about the incident, he blamed that night’s coastal fog for the crash. Keen boozer’s logic.

During the latter part of 1941, the financial fortunes of the Fante family took an upward turn with the death of my grandmother Louise Smart from a heart attack. Her passing brought an inheritance, including significant land holdings, to my mother. Grandma Louise had reversed herself and decided to put Mom back into her will, so now Joyce Fante and her unemployed, bad-tempered, golf- and poker-playing husband had money. The Fante family began to live off Mom’s income.

Pop was spending most of his time on outside activities—golf and all-night gambling—but he somehow managed to squeeze in a few minutes at home in the sack, enough to impregnate his wife.

During that pregnancy my father briefly ended his literary dry spell by writing World War II propaganda for the Office of War Information. His task was to cheer the troops by inventing heartfelt tales of wives and their kids struggling mightily at home for the war effort.

In November 1941 Joyce and John were in Roseville to see old friends and family. A day or so after they arrived, my dad and his brother Tom were having dinner with their wives at a local restaurant when a boozed-up patron and his sidekick chose to pay pregnant Joyce Fante a provocative compliment. Not a good idea. The old man’s best punch was his left hook and he could use it to damaging effect. He decked his adversary quickly. Uncle Tom wasn’t so lucky. His opponent had broken his nose. My father and his brother wound up paying the tab for a bar mirror and a couple of broken chairs.

My older brother Nicolas Joseph Fante arrived on January 31, 1942. Pop had great affection for his firstborn.

Nicky Fante had his grandpa’s name, and his father’s Italian features and coloring. As a small child he was precocious, an early walker and talker, and showed signs of excellence in art. By age six, Nicky had become a more than talented chess player. He was an introverted, sensitive kid and a budding genius. His personality traits seemed opposite those of my father.

In the beginning my brother’s appearance in the family modified Pop’s carousing and decreased his absences from home, though his mood swings became even more violent and frequent as his boozing increased. John Fante now considered himself a failure as an artist, but he took pride in his new son and never failed to list the kid’s accomplishments to the friends and neighbors who were still speaking to him. Nicky was not gregarious and was prone to silence and emotional distance, not unlike my father’s brother Pete.

Pop’s nasty mouth and rages were taking a toll on his life. In the spring and summer of 1943 he worked for the film producer Val Lewton rewriting an old script property from the 1930s called Youth Runs Wild. On the set Lewton could be sneering and contemptuous of his production staff, and he made one too many snide remarks about the old man’s scriptwriting ability. My father punched him in the nose in front of the crew.

John Fante was now also reckless as a gambler, and he frequented downtown L.A.’s seedy dice games, often accompanied by his manic pal, the fine writer William Saroyan, who, not long before, had thumbed his nose at the Pulitzer Prize.

By any standard Bill Saroyan was a loose cannon as a gambler, and on one visit to a Temple Street dice game, after he’d gotten hot and cleaned out six competitors, he returned the money to these complete strangers so he could continue to play and prolong his streak. Two hours later he was broke and begging my father for a loan.

On another occasion several years later, Saroyan signed a deal for fifty thousand dollars—the equivalent of half a million bucks today—to adapt one of his novels to film. He owed money to everybody, including years of back alimony and child support. His inspiration upon pocketing this windfall was to cash the check, stuff the bills in his pockets, and drive to Las Vegas and double his money. He remained in the craps area at the Riviera Casino for thirty hours straight until he’d lost everything. Slamming his drink down, Saroyan jumped up on the table and delivered a line as pithy as anything he’d ever written: “I don’t give a shit what Freud says—I want to win!”

During much of the early 1940s, gambling with his pals, golf, and the pursuit of late-night female companions would set the tone for John Fante’s life.