Ask The Dust ***

by Jon Fante
!939 and 1980
First Ecco edition 2002
First Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition 2006
165 + pages (P.S. Section including interviews etc.)

I got the idea to read this book when I heard an interview with the band members of Calexico. Their latest CD is entitled Carried to Dust and they said it was named after this book. Calexico being one of my all time favorite musical artists, I had to seek this book out.

It's the story of a young struggling author trying to make it in Los Angeles in the midst of the depression (if my chronological time frame is correct it would be early WWII or late Depression). The book is gritty with characters trying to eek out a living. For a while, Bandini, really has to struggle scratching out a couple of cents here and there. The amazing part for me was trying to imagine the small amounts of money having such value. He could survive for pennies a day. Of course it was harder to get those pennies back then too.

Anyway, in the midst of this economic struggle, he meets a Mexican-American waitress, Camilla, in a bar/cafe. It is really interesting how he treats her and overreacts to everything that she says and does. Convinced that she is mocking him, he leaves payment for the coffee in the puddle of coffee that he spills. He has a bit of a cruel streak with the women in his life, yet the author writes like it's no big deal. Now whether that's part of the character development or whether that's how women were treated back then hence it was no big deal - I don't know.

Anyways, Bandini starts to be successful in his writing, and of course he falls in love with the Mexican girl, though they drive each other nuts. It's this weird love/hate relationship. Meanwhile he discover that the girl is a marijuana addict and she starts to have a nervous breakdown. He tries to take care of her, but that proves to be an elusive proposition.

In the end, the author as well as the character romanticise her as an Aztec goddess. She of course is simply a waitress and a pot head. She doesn't see this romanticism. In fact in an argument they have, she insists that she is an American. While he insists that he is his "sweet little peon. A flower girl from old Mexico". Clearly his imagination is clouding the reality of the situation. Or perhaps that it was impossible in that day, for someone non-Mexican to think of someone with Mexican background as an American - even though his roots are Italian-American.

Apparently, this is one of a series of 4 or 5 books he wrote with the character Bandini. In his letters he considered this as a less lyrical book since he wrote it from "my - (it starts with a p and ends with a k)"

So the book has some peotic imagery, especailly at the end. It has some interesting characters and a harrowing setting. And at times it is down right funny. Especailly when Bandini is being to mean to his love interest Camilla.
And there is a movie made that is only a few years old. I haven't seen it yet.