Born: 8-Apr-1909
Birthplace: Boulder, CO
Died: 8-May-1983
Location of death: Woodland Hills, CA
Cause of death: Diabetes complications

Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Author, Screenwriter

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Bukowski's idol

"His name was Arturo, but he hated it and wanted to be called John. His last name was Bandini, and he wanted it to be Jones. His mother and father were Italians, but he wanted to be American. His father was a bricklayer, but he wanted to be a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs." -- John Fante, Wait Until Spring, Bandini

"It's in the blood. It's in the blood of all you Latins. 'Anima naturaliter Catholica,' and once you guys forswear your birthright, it's wandering you will be through the arid wasteplaces of the spirit, sick with the unappeasable longing of a nostalgia of the soul." -- John Fante, regarding Catholicism

"I was a young man, starving and drinking and trying to be a writer... It seemed as if everybody was playing word-tricks, that those who said almost nothing at all were considered excellent writers. Their writing was an admixture of subtlety, craft and form, and it was read and it was taught and it was ingested and it was passed on. It was a comfortable contrivance, a very slick and careful Word-Culture... one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was...The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity. The beginning of that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me. I had a library card. I checked the book out, took it to my room, climbed into my bed and read it, and I knew long before I had finished that here was a man who had evolved a distinct way of writing. The book was Ask the Dust and the author was John Fante" -- Charles Bukowski

Father: Nicholas Peter Fante (stonemason)
Mother: Mary Capolungo
Wife: Joyce Smart (poet, m. 1937)

    University: University of Colorado (dropped out)
    University: Long Beach City College

    Italian Ancestry
    Risk Factors: Blindness, Amputee, Gambling, Alcoholism

Is the subject of books:
John Fante: A Critical Gathering, 1999, BY: Stephen Cooper
John Fante: A Literary Portrait, 2000, BY: R. Collins
John Fante: His Novels and Novellas, 2000, BY: C.J. Kordich
Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante, 2001, BY: Stephen Cooper

Author of books:
Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938, novel)
Ask the Dusk (1939, novel)
Dago Red (1940, short stories)
Full of Life (1952, novel)
The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977, novel)
Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982, novel)
Road to Los Angeles (1985, novel)
West of Rome (1986, novellas)
The Wine of Youth: Selected Stories (1991, short stories)
1933 Was a Bad Year (1995, novel)
Give Me Your Heart: A John Fante Reader (2002, anthology)

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