Fante

by Dan Fante

  In his piece Bessie implied that my father had given up writing novels to support his family and had become a screenwriter out of necessity. More positive press for a forgotten talent.

  Tenacious Ben Pleasants pressed on. He eventually hounded the famed Hollywood writer Budd Schulberg into writing a tribute to John Fante in a letter to the Los Angeles Times. My father and Schulberg had been screenwriter friends for fifty years.

  Around this time John Martin, in a letter to Bukowski, asked about John Fante. He’d read a reference to my father in one of Hank’s novels. Bukowski explained his esteem for my father and Martin went off to find a copy of Ask the Dust. After reading the original text, photocopied from the Los Angeles Public Library, Martin was immediately interested in having Black Sparrow Press republish the novel.

  Early in 1980 this reissue of John Fante’s 1939 novel Ask the Dust hit the bookstores. Charles Bukowski wrote a foreword to the new volume, and the words of the poet laureate of Ripple Wine helped relaunch my father’s career. Ben Pleasants’s long efforts and the nudging at Charles Bukowski had finally worked.

  Of course, it was too late for John Fante to enjoy his upcoming success. The writer who had been a fireball of brilliance years before was now struggling to stay alive. But Pleasants’s regard for John Fante’s work helped buoy Pop’s spirits and gave him a reason to keep going. Ben Pleasants’s interest in my father and his books probably added two years to John Fante’s life.

  From December 1978 through February 1981, Pleasants conducted a series of taped interviews with John Fante. My mother was present at all of these sessions, which usually went on for a couple hours and ran the gamut from Pop’s youth to the present day to his experiences as a Hollywood writer. Sadly, my father was less than his former self at the time of these sessions. He was not the sardonic, well-spoken, opinionated iconoclast of years before. That said, John Fante’s heart was present in the interviews, even if his wit and sharpness were diminished by time. In my opinion, these tapes do not represent the John Fante I knew and should remain unpublished.

  The reading public’s reception for Black Sparrow Press’s edition of Ask the Dust was excellent, largely as a result of Charles Bukowski’s foreword to the book. Ben Pleasants’s long and earnest efforts to promote John Fante’s work had finally paid off, though sadly and notably in Stephen Cooper’s well-researched, workmanlike biography of John Fante, Pleasants got short-sticked. My mother, Joyce Fante, was the reason. She would often bully Cooper while he was writing his volume on my father’s life and “absolutely insist” that things be said and slanted her way—or else.

  As a literary scholar, my mother was at least Cooper’s equal, and if the would-be biographer wanted a firsthand account of John Fante’s life, he would have to tell the story the way Joyce wanted it told.

  The biography was published in 2000, and over the years since my father’s death Joyce had formed a passionate dislike for Ben Pleasants. Her ironfisted control of Cooper’s study on my father was often influenced by this personal bias. My mother was no pushover.

  Among other things, Joyce felt that Pleasants had tarred her reputation after my father’s death with the implication that my dad had succumbed to screenwriting to support his family and thus neglected his literary promise. Joyce had somehow convinced herself that she was being blamed for my father’s lack of productivity as a novelist.

  My mother’s paranoia notwithstanding, she had little to do with my father’s ambitions and output as a novelist. Pop made his own decisions. John Fante had been a dirt-poor kid from Colorado and was very much his own man. He came to Los Angeles seeking his fortune. In time he was seduced by the fat Hollywood paychecks, the status, the golf courses, the women, and the endless sunshine. He sought the good life and he found it, though he would curse himself for forty years for what he called selling his ass to Hollywood. In his own words, Pop almost always went for the paycheck. My mother had little to do with his writing career except to use her formidable editing skills on his behalf.

  As he would confide in one of Ben Pleasants’s unpublished taped interviews, my father had difficulty switching back to writing novels after working on screenplays. The conflict presented by the two incompatible writing pursuits, he said, affected his creativity and kept pushing him in the direction of screen work.

  Interestingly, I never heard my dad make that admission. When he was younger, he was far too proud a man and would never show that kind of vulnerability to anyone. When I heard this comment in the interview, it explained a great deal. My dad was really copping to something that demonstrated his deep sadness about not writing more novels, about selling himself out as an artist.

  Film writing for John Fante was more or less a breeze, often even a mechanical pursuit. In contrast, writing a novel could take him months or a year. Pop had to have his beginning, middle, and end confirmed long before he would face a typewriter. He would first write and rewrite the book entirely in his head—for months walking around, grunting strange dialogue, and snarling at everyone—then finally sit down and type the thing out.

  Sometimes, at dinner, he would relate an entire chapter or two to his family. He’d set the scene by telling us what would lead up to it. Oftentimes, he’d have seen something that day that had triggered an idea and he would just begin talking it out—making stuff up on the spot. But it was always a complete narration with a beginning, a middle, and an end. John Fante was a wonderful storyteller.

  It might take ten minutes or an hour, but it was always fascinating. Then, when it was over, he would study us for our reactions. He’d often look over at me and say, “Okay Danny, whaddya think? Good stuff, right, kid?”

  Soon after the republication of Ask the Dust, my father started being regarded as a lost literary genius. Not that screenwriter Robert Towne took notice. Pop was sure that, for his own reasons, Towne had cooled on the screen version of Ask the Dust. This was Hollywood. A place where enough smoke could be blown up a man’s ass to allow his body to float to Catalina Island.

  His newfound recognition notwithstanding, my father’s health was getting worse. In the middle of 1980 he had another amputation. He managed to survive, but the trauma of yet another brutal surgery proved to be the beginning of the end.

  In 1981, further bolstering John Fante’s success, Charles Bukowski dedicated a book of his poems to my dad. Because of Hank’s foreign popularity, my father’s name and work began to reach a strong European market, though sadly, during his life, Pop would never fully have the pleasure of enjoying literary popularity.

  I had the good luck to be present with my father and Bukowski on several occasions when they met. Hank would make the trip out from San Pedro and spend an hour or two with my father. Bukowski was always gracious and thoughtful. My father and Hank began a friendly correspondence by mail.

  In my life I have had the good fortune to meet and know personally my three most important literary icons: my father, Charles Bukowski, and Hubert Selby Jr.

  Here’s how I met Hubert Selby Jr.

  I’d first read Selby’s work in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Last Exit to Brooklyn shook me at a primal level. Selby’s harsh honesty and his ability to communicate raw, unclouded truth were like a punch in the nose. For me, Selby became the man. He was unafraid as a writer.

  So I began to follow him around Los Angeles. Not like a stalker, but as a fan. If he was scheduled to do a reading, I was there, and on a few occasions, he spent time talking to me, answering a hundred questions.

  Eventually, in the early 1990s when my Chump Change manuscript was completed, I attended another reading and then followed Cubby, as he was known, to his car in a parking lot behind a bookstore. Somehow he remembered me.

  I held up my three hundred typed-out pages and asked him if he would read them and give me his opinion. He rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, lemme see it.”

  Squinting in the bad parking-lot light he eyed the first few pages. Seeing that there were no apparent typos and that
my manuscript was double-spaced, he said, “Okay, write your phone number on the title page. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  Two weeks later I came home from my Santa Monica taxi-driving job and there was a message on my answering machine. That message changed my life. It made me a writer. Cubby liked the book. Hubert Selby Jr. said that I had written a good novel.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Now a Phone Guy

  In 1983, toward the end of John Fante’s life, I made twice-weekly visits to him at the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. I always entered his room with a cup of coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. I was struggling at car sales and a dozen other come-and-go jobs. Pop knew my footsteps and would smile and say, “Hi, Danny. Got a smoke?”

  I’d stick the cigarette in his mouth and put the coffee cup in his hand. “Howya doin’, Pop?” I’d ask.

  “Ah, you know, kid, some days are good and some days . . . well, some days it’s all I can do to keep my head clear and not wreck the joint out of meanness. But they treat me okay. I guess you could say I’m breaking even. Life’s a poosh.”

  My father didn’t know that my life had been out of control. When he’d ask how I was doing, I would always make something up, some lie, some new opportunity, some new job that was about to happen. Both my parents were too involved with my father’s declining health to take notice. Pop, of course, was blind and could not see my face. My mother, on the other hand, chose to ignore my behavior and, I assume for her own reasons, never questioned me.

  I began drinking more heavily in the early 1980s and managed to get myself arrested a few times. I had gone from job to job, borrowing family money, but still could not rescue myself from the depression and self-hate that dogged my life. After a dental surgery I was put on painkillers that triggered an evil drinking binge. It was my worst bottom in years: sleeping in cars, stealing food from convenience stores, and staying drunk as much as possible for days at a time.

  My sexual conduct at the time was stranger than ever. All my life I’d had a crazy overriding need for women and sex. Infidelity often ruined my relationships.

  When drinking I was never done sexually, often going from hooker to hooker in New York and L.A., sometimes several a night. When I was in the limo business and had money, the quality of the women I pursued improved significantly. After I was broke again, I reverted to the street hookers on Sunset Boulevard.

  When women weren’t available and I was near broke, I had no problem letting men give me blow jobs. Although it’s rarely talked about, there are many practicing bisexual men in America, most of them in the closet or, as it’s now sometimes called, on the down-low. Of course in prison it is common practice, but in the closeted straight world, you’re a faggot if you let another man help you get off. For me porno movie theaters and peep-show arcades were the next best thing to women. I made the rounds often to satisfy my needs.

  For a few months I got clean again and took several more jobs, winding up selling used cars for the second time. My own car, an aging Pontiac, had blown its engine, so I was forced to stay in the auto sales business because car dealers at that time in Southern California provided a “demo” vehicle as part of the employment agreement with their sales staff.

  My romantic partner at the time was Katya Kokoff, an ambitious country-western singer. Kat was brilliant as a songwriter and performer, and great in bed, but a loose cannon behind apartment walls in a relationship. Like me she had radical mood swings, and our time together finally ended after a blowup one night and the arrival of the Santa Monica SWAT Team.

  I stopped showing up for my car job and once again was broke and homeless, living on the couches of whoever would take me in.

  The good thing that came from my relationship with Kat was a boiler room job: phone sales. We were still on speaking terms and Kat had briefly worked for Universal Computer Supply as a secretary. She managed to get me a job interview.

  UCS was located in a converted motel in Culver City, and when I first interviewed, there were six guys in a windowless double room pounding the phones and peddling computer supplies: printer ribbons and magnetic tape.

  The owner was Barry “Duke” Chakaris. Duke had “turned his life around” as a phone-room salesman. After years of street flimflamming and hustling to support his needle habit, Chakaris hit the skids and eventually went into rehab.

  He luckily stumbled into the right phone sales job and got cleaned up, then discovered the exploding market in America for computer supplies. It changed his life overnight. He began going to work and twelve-step meetings, stopped shooting dope, and started making money. Telemarketing became Duke’s field of dreams.

  The man Chakaris first worked for was a phone-room scumbag, and Duke quit the gig after a few months. On his own Duke had seen what was possible in the supplies business and became inspired. He began reading how-to sales books. Then he started pestering his last few friends and their parents for financial backing to open his own boiler room. Duke eventually got bankrolled with a few thousand dollars. All Chakaris’s recovering-addict energy went into slamming data processing managers eight hours a day over the phone. He became a virtuoso phone guy, desperate and brilliant and in possession of the personality of a bulldozer at full speed.

  Across L.A. in the early- to mid-1980s, from West Hollywood to the ocean in Venice, there were dozens of fast-buck phone rooms selling everything from pirate videos to rare coins and tools or soliciting for charities and oil and gas leases. All an ambitious and hungry ex-addict needed was a storefront somewhere, desks and chairs, and half a dozen phone lines. Duke Chakaris had begun his phone-room empire from an apartment in Venice Beach.

  After sobering up for my job interview with his company, I was hired. In my interview with Chakaris, my new boss was candid and passionate and honestly told me his own story of drug use and recovery. As a result, for the first time in memory, I didn’t lie to a prospective employer. I admitted to our similarities, and told Duke honestly about my own history and my many attempts to get sober.

  Chakaris was a twelve-steps born-again zealot. He came right to the point: “If you want a shot at my company—if you’re ready to turn your life around—then you just knocked on the right door. Do what I tell you, give me five days a week on that phone, and I’ll show you how to make more money than you ever dreamed—and stay sober.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “But never jerk me around. This is your last shot, Danny. Don’t fuck with me and don’t blow it. If you’re ready to make a commitment to this company and your recovery, I’ll make you a promise: You’ll never look back.”

  Later that night I attended a twelve-step meeting in North Hollywood, my first full meeting—start to finish—in a long time. I didn’t want to go but I’d made a promise to Duke that I would. I’d given my word.

  The meeting was in the Radford Clubhouse in North Hollywood. It was largely attended by bikers and reformed hardasses. That night’s scheduled speaker was a guy named Phil Spoon. Philly, as they called him, was tall and in his seventies, celebrating his twentieth anniversary without booze. Philly was a twelve-step hero to his many friends in the San Fernando Valley.

  At the door when I walked in, one of Philly’s pals, a tattooed biker named Vince, welcomed me and asked me if I was “new.” I made the mistake of letting slip that it was my first meeting in a long time. Vince beamed. He then sat me in the front row five feet from the speaker’s podium and gave me a shiny new Big Book.

  Then Philly himself came over to sit next to me and tried to strike up a conversation. He had gray hair and wore a dark suit and tie and looked like San Quentin’s version of a weathered Donald Sutherland.

  According to his pal Vince at the door, Philly had done a dime at Q and been pronounced dead twice, and was a reformed armed robber. Spoon had spent most of his sobriety touring prisons in California, employed by the state, preaching the twelve-step gospel to anyone who would listen. In short, Spoon was
a sobriety saint at Radford.

  Phil wanted to know if I had any questions about the program. I said no, then got up and went to the back of the room for the free coffee and doughnuts.

  After the meeting got rolling, Spoon took his sobriety cake at the podium to rousing cheers. Then he told his recovery story to the hundred or so worshippers, who laughed and cried and applauded enthusiastically during the forty-minute pitch.

  Then Philly asked the throng if there were any newcomers in the room. Vince was sitting next to me and nudged me with his elbow. I raised my hand.

  Spoon called me to the podium to say a few words. I felt trapped and angry at being put on the spot.

  I stood in front of the group for several seconds without being able to open my mouth. Finally, someone in the room yelled out, “What did you think of Phil’s talk?”

  I sipped some coffee and looked out at the group and cleared my throat. “I’ve never heard so much bullshit in all my life,” I said into the mic.

  After the meeting, on my way out, no one spoke to me. I had publicly dissed a twelve-step hero. But tattooed Vince cornered me in the parking lot. “Look, Dan,” he said, “I know how you feel.”

  Up until that night, my MO around recovery meetings and “saved do-gooder assholes” was to be aggressive. “No you don’t, pal,” I said. “You haven’t got a fucking clue.”

  Then I shook him off and began walking away.

  He grabbed my shoulder from behind and my new Big Book fell to the ground. Vince picked it up and put it in my hands. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Keep coming back. You’re worth it. You can make it. I know you can.”

  I couldn’t get my head around the absurdity of his kindness. Then he hugged me. “Welcome back,” he said.

  Vince’s few words in the parking lot that night changed my view on recovery. I felt welcome at a twelve-step meeting for the first time.