A Wannabe Writer's Writer
Phil(Shanghai)
I've had writing aspirations for years. Ever since I gave up my dream of being a lawyer (I was a pretty unimaginative kid) aged 15 or so. For the rest of my teenage years I spent my time being as anti-social as possible, smoking malboro reds in secret locations with the money my mum gave me for school lunches, day dreaming of being a focus of adulation for cardigan wearing academics the world over, and never, ever, not even once, putting pen to paper.
Every once in a while a book comes along that rekindles that desire. Ask the Dust is the latest book to do that to me.
Arturo Bandini is the classic Barton Fink type struggling writer. Living in a dingy hotel. Scraping together his last few coins to buy oranges. Pouring his heart into letters sent to the editor of some literary magazine a continent away in New York. Existing on the edges of a Los Angeles that comes to life on the page even though Fante hardly describes it at all. Yearning after the Mayan princess in the local diner. Wandering the streets. Desperate for success. Caught between the total freedom of a life of creation, and the total confusion of not knowing what the point of it all is.
One thing in the description on this site that confused me. I didn't understand him as having given up the writer's life at the end of the book. Read it and tell if you think that is what is meant by the ending.
Whatever, this is a very good book. One for the wannabe drifter in all of us.
2006-06-06 06:55 | comment
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