by John Fante
ever your son,
J. Fante
2316 Clyde Avenue
Los Angeles, Calif.
MAY 15, 1935
Dearest Mother,
There just isn’t any explanation for my silence. Every hour since I got your last letter I have been telling myself to answer. I was out of town over the weekend though; I wanted to send you a telegram on mother’s day but I didn’t for two reasons.
In the first place, I didn’t have enough money with me. In the second place, every day with me is Mother’s Day. There is no sense in a special day for Mothers. The whole idea of a Mother’s Day was started by the American Florist’s Associations, their idea being to drum up a lot of flower business on that day. The idea of using a man’s most sacred feeling toward his mother by making him buy flowers and send telegrams seems ugly to me. I don’t want to think about you just one day in the year. I don’t anyway. I think of you always, every day. It’s best that way.
Ross Wills and I left Los Angeles last Saturday noon for a trip into Death Valley, where we planned to take some notes on a prospective movie scenario. Ross has a new car, and away we went. When we got to Baker, California, we changed our minds about continuing the trip to Death Valley. Instead, we went over to Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Boulder Dam. Ross had just sold a story; he had plenty of money, and we wanted to celebrate. We had a jolly time, though it got rather tiresome after such a long ride. We put up in the best hotel in town, arriving in Las Vegas about midnight Saturday night. I had only two dollars with me, for Ross insisted that the whole affair was to be at his expense. We started out by gambling. I on a small scale, and Ross on a larger one. It goes without saying that my two dollars didn’t last long. I was broke before we left the first gambling house, and in that town on the main street there are a dozen such places. Ross lost a huge amount of money; I don’t know exactly how much, but it was close to a hundred dollars. We got to bed close to four o’clock. We were flat broke. In the morning Ross had to telephone his girl in Los Angeles for more money. She sent us fifteen dollars. This was in the morning. It was then that I wanted to send you a telegram, and I was going to ask Ross for the money, but before I knew about it, he had gone back into a gambling house and lost all but a dollar of the money. It was barely enough for us to get back to town. If he hadn’t had a credit card at the filling stations for gasoline we’d still be out on the desert somewhere. […]
With all my love to you and everyone,
Johnnie
NOVEMBER 3, 1935
Dearest Mother,
I have been so sick the past week that I stayed it my hotel and didn’t get to work at all. I start again Monday. The trouble is with my stomach. I have had a number of spells which left me pretty weak. I don’t know exactly what the cause is, but I would say it was too much acid in my system. For awhile I thought it might be heart-trouble, but since no one in the family has ever been afflicted that way, and since I’ve never had any trouble with my heart, I think it must be from the food I am eating. Anyway, I nearly collapsed last Wednesday. The blood left my head and knees and everything began to whirl. I had to grab a chair to keep from falling down. My heart was pounding furiously, the sweat broke out in my face, and all at once I had a terrible fever. The siege hit me so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I got a real scare. For a moment I thought I had been poisoned and that I was about to die, but after awhile the fever left and I was alright except for an unusual palpitation of the heart.
I stayed away from the studio and rested for the most part. Today, Sunday, I am alright again. I hope to get back to work tomorrow. […]
At present I am working on a French Foreign Legion story, a subject which I know nothing about, and it is very hard. I have been working like a dog—and sick as I am—I can’t seem to get much done. But I hope for the best.
Love to all—
Johnnie
% Ross Wills,
1857 North Wilton Place,
Hollywood
{no date, c. November 1935}
Dearest Mother—
I have just been through three very tough days. My stomach went completely on a rampage, giving me violent gas pains which affected my heart, caused a severe case of high blood pressure and nervousness and sent me to the doctor’s office. His analysis was not conclusive, but he’s pretty sure I’m suffering from an acid stomach and he’s placed me on a strict vegetable diet which excludes almost everything worth eating: no meat, no sugar, no cigarettes, no bread, no milk, no coffee, no salt or pepper—in fact, I can eat only greens, and only those foods which do not contain starch. I have been on the diet for three days and the results are so far excellent although I am fast losing weight. In another week there won’t be an ounce of excess weight upon me.
I was very worried at the time the attack hit me. My heart behaved queerly, jumping and kicking and sending queer shooting pains through my chest and down my shoulders and arms. My feet became ice-cold, blood rushed from my head, causing dizziness and a feeling that I was about to lose consciousness; I had no strength and felt as though I was going to die. Naturally I was frightened, which aroused the condition and made matters worse. My breathing was difficult, so that I gasped for air, and the ringing in my ears shut off all sounds. It was truly an unforgettable experience and one I shall profit from. It marks the end of my careless eating habits and the beginning of a more normal, sensible life. I am, in fact, very glad it happened. Except for the discomfort at the time, it has done me no harm. I think I shall be on this rigid diet for at least three months—a long time—but when I gradually leave it I shall be cured, not only of the sickness but also of any carelessness which brought it on in the first place. At present I am taking a medicine after meals, but I believe it will only be for the duration of the bottle.
I suppose the best place for me at a time like this is home with you, but right now I can’t afford to come home; I have only a few dollars, not enough for the fare, and I don’t know that the trip wouldn’t cause me harm. I have become a very nervous individual, and among other causes the condition of my stomach is due to nervousness: that is, nervous indigestion.
Except for the time lost in sickness, I have kept myself busy with my work. Two short stories are now in the mail, and I shall have another ready tomorrow. The longer I stay in this business the more I realize its heart-lessness. At times one becomes very discouraged. I suppose that happens to the most courageous, however.
Give my love to everyone, and above all, to yourself.
Johnnie
1327 Lemoyne Street
Los Angeles, Calif.
DEC 30, 1935
Dearest Mother—
I am feeling much better now. My weight has come down to about 138, reducing me to nothing but bone and muscle and the result is, on the whole, good. I seem to lack the vitality I once had, but that is due to the rigorous diet I am living by. There is one item on the doctor’s dictum which I have ignored more or less, and that item is cigarettes. I admit I haven’t cut down on them as I am supposed to, but the best I can do is try. I’m not smoking nearly as much as before. The order was to smoke about six a day. My best day was twelve; that’s pretty good, though. A person with my nervous temperament must do something, and restraint is not so much hard as it is easily forgotten. I smoke a lot without even knowing about it.
The idea of coming home for awhile still appeals to me very much. When you say in your letter that “we’ll manage somehow” it is not enough. Where could you put me? I know how small the house is, too small for another bed. And then too, where would I work? Of course I might stay at a hotel in Roseville, or rent a room near the house; that would be alright, I think.
It has been very cold here for the last twenty-four hours. Rain fell a short time Sunday and today too it appears that more rain is coming. I used to like these murky dull rainy days, but since I have been sick I prefer sun and warmth. […]
I can’t imagine what I’ll do New Years Eve—that’s tomorrow night. I hav
e a girl, you know—Marie is her name, and she has been very valuable to me while I have been sick. When you are sick you get very lonely and starved for the presence of another, particularly at night. Marie has been with me every night, taking very good care of me. Indeed she has been like a wife to me, taking care of my laundry, sewing my sox and keeping my clothes in order. Many times these past months I have been without money and she has assisted me. She wants to marry me and I tell her that some day soon we shall certainly become man and wife, but I’m afraid I am not sincere when I tell Marie that. It would hurt her though, if I didn’t. She depends on me in many things; she’s a highly excitable girl, easily frightened, and she needs me and has come to look forward to our meetings. We see one another constantly, and have a lot of fun together.
Christmas Eve we wanted to do something different, something unusual. We had only nine dollars between us, so our choice was limited. Yet we had a fine time. We got aboard a Red train and went to a lonely little beach town, a perfectly dead and isolated one-horse town much smaller than Roseville. We walked through the streets and along the shore front until we had seen everything the town had to offer, and then we went to bed in a little hotel. Next morning we had breakfast, went to Mass in the town’s little church, and then returned to Los Angeles about noon—so that’s how I spent Christmas. I enjoyed it too.
Love to all Johnnie
{To William Saroyan}
WINTER (FALI?)
1938[C. JANUARY 1938]
Dearest Darling Willie,
I’m still sorry I didn’t meet you that night after the Chink dinner and tackle you in a game of pool. I’m a whizzeroo at that game—or certainly I used to be. Indeed, the game is so thoroughly a part of my blood that hereabouts in this goofy town, whenever an actor starts to blab about his “cue” I feel my reflexes jumping into motion and I start reaching for a billiard stick.
I am now a complete and ungarnished hack. The field is radio. The subject matter is one-act plays. The technique is simple, and even interesting. The one-dimensional limitations of a radio play make for some pretty facile quirks and squeezes. And strange as it may seem, the taboos are less rankling than any other field in American writing—excepting of course the stage and serious literature. You can say hell on the radio. You can say damn, and you can even talk about the brotherhood of man and communism with a small c. Reason: you deal with such morons that they don’t understand you. The radio today is a sleeping powder. Turn it on, relax, and soon enough the emanating bilge wafts you to slumber. All the inhibitions I ever had are pouring out of me and into a radio script. I mean of course unaesthetic inhibitions. All the crap and guff and flubdub, all the dullness and tedium, all the mediocre thoughts and ideas I’ve accumulated over a long, terrible life, are walking from under my fingers and across pages and pages of sheer unpolluted crap. […]
There’s dough in radio, Willie. Your kind of dough. Ten page, one-act plays—three to five hundred bucks apiece. It’s really a lark. I can turn the stuff out hanging from a four story building by one foot, and writing with the toes of my other foot. I’ve knocked out four plays, and [am] finishing my fifth, in three weeks. You get authorship credit too. Six million people on a chain hookup like Rudy Vallee’s—and they do some goddamn good stuff once in while—Chekhov—Shaw—O’Neill—Joyce—and even the morbid “Mice and Men.” And within the concentration of one dimension there is power—and above all—speech—words—pure speech and sound. … but all of this is naturally the exception rather than the rule. … the average is awful, but no worse than pix. The joke shows are all pretty lousy. I’m talking about drama. (Incidentally, I haven’t sold any of my plays yet but I am told by my agent at the Morris office that they are damn fine and will click.)
My wife is in Berkeley. We are too poor to live together. Her people are wealthy but they hate me because I am an Italian. It is a disgusting situation … and insoluble. My wife needs a job. She writes too. Her poetry has appeared in the Amer. Mercury and California Arts. You met her. I’m sure you liked her. I wrote her to figure on a phone call from you.
It happens that her aunt Mrs. Maynard Shipley, is the head of the San Francisco WPA. In short, she has a big drag but only inferentially. I wrote her that you’d be glad to do all you could. Since she has split wide open with her family—who DO NOT know we are married—she is strictly on her own—naive, innocent, and terribly sincere. She is a graduate of Stanford, a Chi Omega or something etc.
I wish you’d call her, possibly meet her and put her wise to the best way of getting that 94 bucks a month. Her people are through with her since she has openly defied them about me, and since they believe that she is going to marry me, but do not know we are already married.
I an enclosing a page from my wife’s last letter. The explanation is self-evident. I know that both of us can trust you to remain secretive about our marriage—her family would tear her to pieces if they discovered the truth.
I have told her you would call her Friday afternoon or evening. I don’t recall your own private phone number or I would spare you the trouble, and she could call you. This is a tremendous favor to ask of you, Willie, but a time and place will arrive when I shall be able to repay you in something akin to what this means to my wife and me.
When you call her, be sure you ask for “Joyce Smart” and thereafter always refer to her by that maiden name. She is at this address, listed in the Berkeley exchange. Chris Runckel,
2312 Rose Street,
Berkeley, Calif.
We hope to be together very soon. My heart is set on it. I’m hopelessly in love with her and it eats me inside to feel my helplessness now. But I know I can count on you.
Johnnie
1851 No. Argyle
Hollywood
[Undated; c. early 1940]
Dearest Folks,
Now that you have seen Joyce I doubt there is very much I can add to what she had to give in the way of news. I am well, of course, and the effects of the flu have left me no worse. Down here for almost two months we have had fog and damp, cold weather. Today was a good day, but the past months have been very unpleasant. This sort of weather depresses me. I don’t think it has any effect on my work, and yet it might, because I frankly haven’t done as much as I should. […]
Joyce seems to think that Pappa looks very well, but since your report conflicts so much with what she has seen I have suggested she go to Dr. McAnally and talk to him. I know of course that Pappa should not be working hard, but at the same time it is a great blessing to know that he is still a strong man for his years. Not many men have the courage and stamina to keep at his pace all these years. It shows he comes from fine stock, and I know I am very proud of him. In fact, I like to brag about the fact that he can still lay brick and stone with the best of them, and I tell all my friends about it. Pappa will still be alive and swallowing big glassesful of vino when the rest of us have been put under the ground. Some people simply refuse to die: he is one of them.
I miss Joyce very much. I have got so used to having her around at all times that the house has become a deserted building, as though all the furniture were gone and nobody lived there anymore. We get along so very well together, the two of us. When you consider that we are both in the same house constantly from morning to night it is a very unusual and very happy situation. Now that she has gone I do little or nothing more than eat and sleep.
That’s about all this time. Give my love to everybody at home.
Johnnie
{Letterhead} Hospital of the Good Samaritan
SATURDAY [I.E., FEBRUARY 3, 1940]
Dear Parents—
Monday night about 11:30 I was driving down a narrow street in Manhattan Beach. I was traveling about 50 miles an hour when I suddenly lost control of the car and crashed into a telephone pole. I was not knocked unconscious, but I was pretty badly shaken, and when I got out of the car I was covered with blood and shaking violently. The car was completely wrecked, my right arm crashed through
the windshield. I walked six blocks to a friend’s house, and he drove me to a hospital. The doctor went to work at once. He gave me local anaesthetics and proceeded to sew up the cuts in my arm, my legs and my face. Altogether he applied 75 stitches—60 of them in my right arm, where the muscles were torn out to the bone. It took him 3 hours and he did a good job. Joyce got there while he worked on me, and I was put to bed. Next day I decided to call an ambulance and come to a big Los Angeles hospital for x-rays, because I was afraid I had broken some bones. Tuesday afternoon I got to this place, and x-rays were taken which showed a compound fracture of my right cheekbone. I have 2 good doctors, and the cheekbone is set now, and I am getting well fast. I shall be able to leave the hospital Monday, and except for a few scars on my face and arm I shall be as good as new. The car is ruined, and we will be broke after paying hospital bills; but I am very glad to report I am out of danger and shall be home Monday.
I didn’t let you know because I wanted to be sure I was out of danger first. Please don’t worry because I am as good as new—
Johnnie
SATURDAY [c. April 1941)
Dear Mother—
We are down to our last 15 dollars, but at last something good has turned up, and I think I shall start work next Monday or Tuesday. If it happens, I shall make $500 or $750 a week for eight of ten weeks. The job is pretty certain, so my agent tells me, but I am not going to allow myself to believe it until I get my first check. Meantime we are both well, and I have been working hard on another movie idea.
Joyce and I are not sure at all, but it may be that you’ll have a grandchild in about 9 months. All we know is that Joyce thinks this is going to happen. It might be a false alarm, and we really won’t know for a couple of weeks, so please don’t get excited until you hear definitely from me that it is going to happen. Keep this a secret, please.
