Hollywood. Here in the city of a million smiles and promises, on March 2nd, my father’s most famous novel ASK THE DUST will have its motion picture premiere at The Egyptian Theater. The film stars Selma Hyack and Colin Farrell and is Produced by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner and is Written and Directed by American screenwriter Robert Towne. I have seen ASK THE DUST as a movie and I know it will be an almost certain success.

But there is a strange and twisted history attached to John Fante’s book. A tale of a broken heart and how a small but passionate little novel has managed to survive against all odds to endure decades of wars and earth quakes and national obesity and Cartoons of Allah and Brittany Spears and George Bush and Reality TV and Botox and the brave new world of American info-tainment-fiction, to rise to the status of greatness.

As a novel ASK THE DUST was first published in America in 1939 By Stackpole Sons in New York. When the book was released it received surprisingly excellent reviews in such prestigious newspapers as The New York Times. Those were happy days – glorious days - in the life of young John Fante and his career as a novelist. So what happened? Why did ASK THE DUST fail as a novel? Why did it sell under three thousand copies and disappear from the book shelves within a year? What became of John Fante’s literary career?

Here’s the story: In 1939 as my father’s publisher was about to release ASK THE DUST with a nationwide publicity campaign, a bizarre event occurred simultaneously: A compulsive German housepainter turned unemployed dictator was coming into power. While behind bars daydreaming of invasions and V2 Rockets and goose stepping blond haired troops marching around the planet, Adolph Hitler had written his version of The New Testement: A book called Mein Kampf. Stackpole Sons, John Fante’s publisher, somehow managed to get their hands on an unauthorized copy of Hitler’s famous rant and publish it without his permission. This made Mein Fuhrer very unhappy. To emphasize his annoyance Adolph decided to spend the next two years suing Stackpole Sons in an American court. And here’s the punch line: The money that the publisher would spend to publicize ASK THE DUST was spent on defending that lawsuit against Adolph Hitler. Ouila! John Fante’s hopes of becoming a famous novelist are gone. ASK THE DUST is forgotten and goes to sleep in the catacombs of literary obscurity. My father, struggling to make a living and support his family, decides to give up writing books and begins to concentrate on earning the fat paychecks Hollywood doles out to Make John Garfield and Orson Wells and Edward G. Robinson sound intelligent and talk tough on movie screens around America.

Flash forward to thirty years later. In 1969 ASK THE DUST is long out of print and long forgotten. But an ambitious young man named Robert Towne who is living in L.A. has been researching books about old Los Angeles while writing a soon-to-be-famous movie called CHINATOWN. He is fascinated by the brilliance of ASK THE DUST and wonders why it was forgotten. Robert Towne and John Fante meet often and become friends. ‘Some day,’ Towne promises, ‘ASK THE DUST will be a great movie. You’ll be famous. I promise.’ John Fante smiles; ‘Sure sure sure,’ he says. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

What happened next: Nothing! Absolutely nothing. ASK THE DUST is re-buried and goes back to sleep for another eight years until a writer named Charles Bukowski who is notorious as a drunken poet reads the novel off the L.A. County Library book shelves and falls in love with it. It will be Bukowski who makes sure that ASK THE DUST is re-published and begins to get the attention it has long deserved.

By now it is 1978 and John Fante is old and blind and very sick. He is a double amputee from Diabetes. The unemployed screenwriter survives on state aid and a small pension from The Writer’s Guild Of America. His broken heart from the failure of his best book has never healed. Literary fame has lost its importance to my father and the fantasy of ASK THE DUST becoming a famous movie has evaporated. Even the brand new edition of the book that appeared in print that year gives my father little satisfaction.

Toward the end of John Fante’s life Robert Towne began calling the hospital to try to cheer him up. He would say, ‘We’re getting closer, Johnnie. Maybe I’ll get the money this year and we can do the film. You’ll see. ASK THE DUST will be a hit movie.’

Papa would just smile from his hospital bed and light a cigarette. Sure. Sure. Sure.

My father died quietly in 1983 after his long illness. I was there with him holding his hand while he took his last breath.

Twenty-five more years go by. The now famous and stubborn screenwriter Robert Towne is an old man himself. He has spent half his life trying to keep his promise to his friend, John Fante.

One morning in 2003 my phone rang. I recognized Towne’s voice on the other end. It had been over twenty years since we had spoken. “Dan,” he said, “We’re making ASK THE DUST. It will be a movie! I wanted to tell you myself.”

After I hung up it took almost five minutes for me to stop crying. God bless you Robert! Wherever he is John Fante is smiling and smoking a twenty dollar cigar.

Dan Fante is the author of three internationally published novels – ‘Chump Change,’ ‘Mooch’ and ‘Spitting Off Tall Buildings’ - in 11 countries - and a most recent book of poems, ‘A Gin Pissing Raw Meat Dual Carburetor V8 Son Of A Bitch From Los Angeles.’ Fante’s full-length play, ‘The Closer’ was named #1 on The Los Angeles Times’ list of Most Notable Plays Of The Year. The Los Angeles Ovation Committee nominated Dan Fante for Best Writer of a World Premiere Play. Fante’s fifth book, a collection of short stories entitled, ‘Corksucker’ will be published in England by Wrecking Ball Press in 2004 and by Sun Dog Press in America in early 2005. And next year, his novel ‘Mooch’ will be a Hollywood film, co-written by Dan Fante and Danny De Vito, directed by Danny De Vito

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.