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The Road to Los Angeles
"I had a lot of jobs in Los Angeles Harbor because our family was poor and my father was dead..."
"The Road to Los Angeles" is Fante's first novel, begun in 1933 and finished in 1936; at the time it was rejected by the publishers and was printed only about 50 years later by Black Sparrow press, after the author's death.
The story.
Arturo Bandini, a proud eighteen-year-old makes his way in 1930s California. He lives with his mother and sister, works in a cannery, and aspires to be a great writer. Arturo has read too many books, and often quotes Nietsche "superman" Weltanschauung.
At the point when Nietzsche loses his mind he is said to have been watching a man whip an old horse, Nietzsche burst into tears and hugs the horse weeping uncontrollably. Fante uses this when in the book Arturo sees an old hunchback woman smiling in the park, his eyes drenced he carries her basket for her. After feeling pure empathy for her life and pain he says goodbye to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and runs home and apologizes to his mother. This does not last of course and he goes back to being the same old Arturo. Early in the novel he enacts a hilarious though disturbing blood purge, "for the good of the Fatherland", against some crabs he imagined had questioned the might of Superman Bandini. Later in the book at times when he is down on himself he refers to himself as a crabkiller.... by Paul Miller
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