Chapter Thirty
A Novelist Again

In 1975, John Fante signed a contract with Bantam Books and received a check for his novel The Brotherhood of the Grape. He was delighted at the prospect of being back in print. For years my father had cursed publishers and doubted himself and faced consistent failure as an author. Because he was no longer an A-list screenwriter and lacked the distraction of hustling for movie deals, he had gained the ability to focus on what he did best. His diabetes had worsened, and he now limped badly and was losing the vision in his only good eye, but that did not minimize his pleasure at the prospect of having a new book on bookstore shelves.

Robert Towne, who had won an Oscar for his Chinatown screenplay, liked the novel enough to take an option on the film rights. Towne then brought Brotherhood to his friend Francis Ford Coppola, who “fell in love” with the book and said he wanted to make it as a movie.

My father was optimistic, but he had gone down this road before. Also, in the past, Towne had made promises that, from Pop’s point of view, he had not kept. As it turned out, the two men began a relationship of hide-and-seek. To John Fante’s annoyance, Towne would wax enthusiastic about the prospects for my father’s work when they spoke, then disappear and not return a phone call for months at a time.

Even so, during those days the goose hung high. Coppola decided to publish The Brotherhood of the Grape in four installments in his new magazine, City of San Francisco, and talks about a film deal for the book eventually got under way. Sadly, like so many other done deals that my father had been involved in, this one hit a snag too. Coppola was in the middle of making his colossus Apocalypse Now, and soon all bets would be off.

The following year, 1976, brought mixed health news for my dad. Ulcers on his feet were not healing, but an eye operation to save his sight did work.

In January 1977, my father held a hardcover copy of The Brotherhood of the Grape in his hands for the first time. His first book published in twenty-five years. Pop was very pleased.

One afternoon during that time, in a phone conversation, we were discussing his success with the novel. I had been writing poetry again and was very discouraged. My father gave me some advice. “Don’t give up, Dan,” he said. “I remember when I was a young guy. I was broke all the time and every once in a while I’d pull the cushions off the couch and dig down in the lining for enough change to pay for a pack of cigarettes. Funny thing happened: I usually got lucky. Just put your work in your desk drawer, kid. Remember it’s there. One day something you write will get published and you’ll go back to that drawer. That old work will be the boost you need.”

John Fante never knowingly discouraged or said no to another writer who was trying to get into print or peddle a screenplay. There were many he encouraged. Pop always helped when he could.

A couple months later he was admitted to the hospital, where his devoted surgeon was generous enough to take the morning off from Ranch Park Golf Club to hack off two of Pop’s toes.

A few weeks later this same diligent medical practitioner elected to lop off my father’s leg below the knee, always mindful to dispatch his bill for services in a timely fashion. That my father was undergoing repeated physical trauma somehow escaped the doctor’s practiced self-interest. The sawbones managed about the same degree of empathy for suffering as, say, the meat manager of the local Safeway where my father purchased his dog bones in bulk.

Shortly thereafter, ever alert to budding financial opportunities, this same ghoul then removed Pop’s leg above the knee. To say that the cure was worse than the illness is to understate what my father endured.

Several days after John Fante arrived home from the hospital, I was finally able to speak to him on the phone. “How’s it goin’, Pop?” I asked.

“How do you think it’s goin’, kid? It’s shit. Capital S.”

“Are you feeling any better?”

“I’m callin’ Dr. Blood and Guts after we get off the phone. I want the leg back. I’m having it bronzed and mounted over the fireplace.”

At home recuperating in July of that year, after the onset of blindness and as a result of his many surgeries, my father lost it. He became violent and incoherent.

My mom had been caring for him for months, dealing with a husband who woke up two or three times a night in fright, screaming, thrashing, falling to the floor in pain.

From the next bedroom, Joyce would go to him, hold him, lift him back onto his bed if necessary, and reassure my father that all was well, that the blackness and pain he was experiencing would somehow go away.

Soon after, John Fante became completely crazy. My mother was unable to cope with the situation and suggested to me that I return to Los Angeles for a few weeks. I agreed.

With no options remaining, it was decided to admit my father to the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills. There, for several weeks, he was visited by his family. Pop would have short stretches of lucid conversation where he’d ask about one of his dogs or children or about a grandchild, but these gave way to a deepening mania.

Our family now stopped being hopeful and began to discuss the end. These conversations exasperated me to the extent that I stopped going to the hospital when I knew one of my family members would be present. Pop’s doctors were full of noncommittal diagnoses and clichés, but when pinned down would finally agree that John Fante would probably die. Whatever my reasoning was at the time, I would not accept this conclusion or its possibility. I loved my father too much to let him go.

While visiting Pop, alone with him in the hospital, I would open the subject of writing and his work and talk to him about what I was doing. He would often engage me for half a minute, then begin to babble.

One afternoon several weeks after he’d been admitted and given a death sentence, I was sitting with him. When he spoke, his conversation made no sense whatsoever. Then his room telephone rang. In the past I had always picked up the phone, simply said “wrong number,” and then hung up.

The caller that day was Robert Towne, my old man’s on-again, off-again screenwriter friend. Towne asked how my father was doing. I said, “He’s holding his own for the moment, Robert. It’s not good.”

When my father heard the name Robert, he came to attention and sat up in bed. “Who are you talking to?” he said.

“It’s Robert Towne, Pop.”

“Give me the phone, kid.”

I handed my father the receiver and from that moment on he was completely lucid. The telephone conversation they had that day was about Towne’s plans for The Brotherhood of the Grape.

A few days later John Fante went back home completely coherent, completely himself. It was mid-1977.

In October 1979, Pop began a spell of untraumatized stable health. He wanted to work again and decided to start a new novel. Once a day, when possible, when not in a brain fog from his insulin injections, he would sit in his wheelchair in the living room and my mom would position herself on the big couch opposite. Pop, completely blind, would dictate word-for-word to my mother, who wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads.

My father spoke his manuscript. Sometimes four or five pages a day. He talked slowly but never paused to correct himself or change anything. He had “thought out” everything—every word—in his head.

Mom transcribed the novel and later, when she typed up the manuscript, the punctuation was inserted.

I was present with my father the day he dictated the last page of Dreams from Bunker Hill to my mother. Pop and I were discussing the end—the last paragraph. Young Arturo Bandini has returned to a cheap Filipino hotel in downtown Los Angeles. He is afraid he has lost his talent.

The text reads:

    I had seventeen dollars in my wallet. Seventeen dollars and the fear of writing. I sat erect before the typewriter and blew on my fingers. Please God, please Knut Hamsun, don’t desert me now. I started to write and I wrote . . .

At this point, as Mom read it back, my father turned toward me. “Dan,” he said, “I want to end the book with Arturo stealing a quote. He writes a phrase from something he’s read to help get himself started. Then the text reads, ‘It wasn’t mine, but what the hell, a man had to start someplace.’”

Pop said, “I was thinking of that quote from Dickens. How’s it go? ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . .’”

I thought about it. “That’s not bad, Pop,” I said, “but what about something lighter? Something less important. Arturo’s just trying to get himself started again. Hey, remember that one from Lewis Carroll?” Then I quoted: “ ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—of cabbages—and kings.’ ”

My father took a few seconds to find the end of his cigarette with a lighter. After firing up a Kool and taking a deep drag, he said, “Yeah, kid, you’re right. That’s better. Something lighter. I like it.”

Then he turned in the direction of my mother. “Honey, let’s do the one from Lewis Carroll. It has just the right tone.”

“I like it too,” Mom said. “Delightful. Silly. It’s perfect.”

That was it. Dreams from Bunker Hill was done. My father had completed his last book.

He looked toward me. “There’s a program on the radio I want to hear, kid. Wheel your gimped, broken old man outside to the patio. Let’s enjoy a little sunshine.”

“Sure, Pop,” I said. “Congratulations on finishing your book.”

“Yeah. I’m having a good day. I’m not dead yet.”