Customer Reviews

John Fante: A Literary Portrait (Essay Series 39)

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I knew John Fante. We worked together at screenwriting in Los Angeles. While I started out wanting to applaud Mr. Collins' efforts at capturing his subject, again and again in reading this book I came upon unsubstantiated assumptions that I know to be in part or wholly inaccurate. Collins is a decent enough writer but here he takes on alchemy and produces too much hot air. Comparatively, Steven Coopers biography of Fante was at least workmanlike and based on interviews with Fante's widow, Joyce, and Fante's family. Conversely, Mr. Collins' effort appears to be fundamentally realized by intellectual assertion and personal specualtion. Having know Fante I cannot recommend this work. At best too much of it is guesswork and at worst it is insulting to its subject. I have no wish to be unkind to Mr. Collins but I do recommend that he stick to writing about what he actually knows.

This book provides an excellent account of the California screenwriter and novelist's life, and an eminently readable interpretation of his works in terms of his life as an Italian-American author. This is essential reading for anyone interested in Fante and in the Italian-American experience.

This is a brilliant portrait of a misunderstood and underestimated author. I recommend it to any student of California literature.