THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“We embrace those things that make us unique or odd. For only in these things can we locate and then develop our most individual abilities.”― Nnedi Okorafor
Today is the birthday of John Fante, a Los Angeles writer who was prolific in the 30’s and the 40s and who really helped frame my Los Angeles experience when living there in the 90s. I forget who turned me onto him…might have been Don Waller…might have been Billy Childish…but regardless, after I read Ask The Dust I was off to the Dante races, reading most of his books within a very short period of time.
Fante was the precursor to Charles Bukowski, living, writing, and celebrating downtown Los Angeles (way before it’s rebirth in the 21st century). My favorite of his books focused on the crazed Arturo Bandini, one of the great anti-heroes of literature, the self proclaimed killer of crabs (read The Road To Los Angeles for that incredible yarn) getting into all sorts of mischief as he dealt with surviving in depression-era Los Angeles. My friend Larry Hardy and myself (the same person who I ate Oki Dogs with every Sunday) would go to pre-uplifted downtown Los Angeles searching for Fante hangouts. And that was hard…because the street he made famous in his novels, Bunker Hill, was both on any map you could find AND for the most part hidden by sky-scrapers that had been built on top of it. We did happen upon a seedy bar called The Golden Gopher that fit the feel and the specified location from his books…and toasted our success while looking over our shoulders to make sure that we would survive the visit. It was the first bar I had ever been to that had a liquor store component, so you could leave and still have something to drink as you hit the sidewalk.
Not all of Fante’s work was focused on the pre-Bukowski-esque charades. He wrote an incredible novel called Full Of Life telling the tale of he and his very pregnant wife, trying to get their lives in order before their baby arrived. Fante wrote the screenplay for the movie version of the book that came out in 1956, which was part of a string of screenplays he wrote for Hollywood (including the great Walk On The Wild Side).
I went back to Full Of Life when Barb was pregnant, and now that I think about it, that was the last time I picked up a Fante story. It might be time to revisit the Bandini series:
“What the hell, I used to say, take your time, Bandini. You got ten years to write a book, so take it easy, get out and learn about life, walk the streets. That’s your trouble: your ignorance of life.”
Happy Birthday to my favorite Los Angeles writer, John Fante.
The Top 30 Most Expensive Items Sold on Discogs in February 2021
It is a shanda to see Journey on this list. Who would pay good money for a Journey record I ask you????
Kathryn Hahn Gets One Degree Closer to Kevin Bacon
I love that Interview Magazine still pushes ahead with the same feel it had when Warhol was alive…ok…maybe a little less subversive…but maybe not! It still celebrates fame, that is for sure…and this is a great interview.
Still Lifes and Our Environment: Nature Morte @ The Hole
“Whether turning the wildlife into sculptures, objects, or renderings (Landers, Lee, Girsch), creating surreal takes on natural disasters (Jupin, Yahnker), reinventing the classic floral painting (Baldvin, Seal), or creating fresh takes on the traditional formate (Pedro, Sherry, Van Minnen), the exhibition presents what sort of thing influence contemporary artists to speak about the transience of life and the certainty of death.”
Books by John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Sherman Alexie among most objected to in 2020
Yes, we are still living in a primitive age: “The closing of physical libraries because of the pandemic has slowed but not stopped patrons and others from calling for books to be banned or restricted.On Monday, the American Library Association reported more than 270 challenges to books in 2020, from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” to Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” compared to 377 the year before. The number of challenges is likely far higher than reported.”
COLD SUMMER
by Charles Bukowski
