"Children - to hell, he muttered. They hate their own father.... Are ashamed of their own flesh and blood.... Better dead. They bury you. They'll forget you...". This is a passage from "Full of life", the novel that gave John Fante the greatest satisfaction (was made also into a quite successful movie). These words are pronounced by the father of the protagonist in "Full of life" (inspired from the writer's own father). But this is not what happened to John Fante, he was not forgotten at all. Twenty years ago on the 8 of may John Fante passed away, by then blind and without his legs, amputated because of a deadly diabetes. But Italy remembers him, and celebrates his works with a volume in the Meridiano Mondadori collection (1768 pages, 49 euros). Il Centro, the Abruzzo-based newspaper that - within Fante's recent rediscovery - was among the first voices in bringing to the limelight the works of this son of Abruzzo, wants to honor John Fante with an interview to Francesco Durante (a great connoisseur of Fante's works, several of which he translated, and now the editor in charge of the Meridiano Mondadori), and also with a short story authored by Dan Fante, John's son, himself a successful writer. Dan conceived the story of his first novel ("Chump Change") against the background of his own father's death.
Did you encounter difficulties or obstacles in preparing the Meridiano volume on John Fante?
"No, no difficulties absolutely", explains Francesco Durante on the phone, "Publisher Mondadori decided to devote a Meridiano volume to Fante. Or better, the market decided that it was enough time to make a Meridiano on the author of "Ask the dust". Fante was at first a niche author in Italy, but lately, thanks to the volumes published by his two Italian publishers, Marcos y Marcos and Fazi, reached out to quite a large audience selling some dozen thousands copies. This means he has by now his own circle of admirers including such singers as Francesco De Gregori, Piero Pelù, Vinicio Capossela and Luciano Ligabue. Also Vergassola, a well-known cabaret actor from La Spezia, during his TV show "Bulldozer", some evenings ago, mentioned Bandini. If during a TV program the character of a writer is mentioned, this means the writer is part of that country's culture. And by now also in the States they are getting to know John Fante, especially after the publication of Stephen Cooper's biography (published in Italy by Marcos y Marcos)".
What was the basis of your introduction to the Meridiano volume?
"I gave to my preface the title of On of the Big Boys, with a reference to the passage in "Ask the dust", where the protagonist asks the great authors in the library to make some room for himself too, room for Bandini. And he got that place in the library. Fante is among the great ones, a writer to include in important collections. There's a large anthology on Los Angeles where the editors finally acknowledged that "Ask the Dust" was among the greatest books on Los Angeles ever written".
You just mentioned the Italian song writers who love Fante and act as his testimonials among young readers. What was their influence on Fante's appreciation?
"At first, as it always happens, the niche is a bit elitarian. Many years ago it happened with Vittorini, Cecchi, Luigi Berti, the writers who were working with publisher Longanesi. The problem is, Fante was not an author that wrote a book every year. After "Dago red" (1940) he did not write over 10 years. Then between "Dago red" and "Full of life" (1952) there was also a war and he was forgotten. Again, after "Full of life" more years go by. Possibly, if he had kept on writing one book every year, everything would have been different. But then, who knows, if he had written one book every year, he would have not written those great books he did. It is not by chance that Fante is a writer that writers like, after Elio Vittorini there were Tondelli and others".
A simple style, that everybody likes, but a simplicity that is quite difficult to achieve.
"In the last few months, while working on this Meridiano volume I realized that he was actually aware of his writing style. In his letters to Carey McWilliams he described his own prose as the best in California. He wrote that ironically, but at heart he probably believed it. A measure of Fante's qualities derives also from his greatly exacting discipline, he asked a lot of himself. And this is shown also by the number of projects that he started and were never completed. And that was because he was so utterly exacting with himself too".
How was that such a great writer made screenplays that were not able to achieve recognition?
"Who knows, he always worked in the cinema only for the money. Only once did he obtain recognition and success, with a movie rendering of his own story "Full of life". Everything else, in the cinema world, was for his just his job. He was at bottom a wage-earner. He worked for six months in the Mgm studios, and wrote second-class screenplays. But that was only because he had decided that his job in the movie world was just his means to earn a lot of money. The truth however is also that great writers do have this attitude to cinema, and, on the other hand, great script writers are not usually great writers too".
How much is still to be done, in your opinion, to give Fante what he truly deserves?
"Our Italian perspective is different. In the States there is still a long way, and many years will be needed for Fante to be acknowledged as the great writer that he truly was. Why? My opinion is that his origin acts as a limit, American literature is tempted to include him within an "ethnic" enclosure. And I believe that you cannot understand Fante if you do not understand his being an Italian American. His subject matter was also mostly the Italian American experience. However, under another point of view, is it not true that this is what American culture actually is, that is to say a mixture of cultures? France is probably the country that honored Fante most : his books sold 3 million copies. Here in Italy, we have just now reached a degree of appreciation of his works. This Meridiano volume is coming out at the right moment, when emigration studies are experiencing a great revival. And we are aware that Fante is not an isolated fruit, but the visible part of an iceberg, a much larger literary universe. I am convinced that research on Italian American writers will lead to a greater appreciation of other writers, I am thinking of Pietro Di Donato, for example. And then there are so many others that must be not just rediscovered, as it was the case with John Fante, but actually and truly discovered, among them, Garibaldi Lapolla, born at Rapolla in Basilicata, brought to America when he was just 4 years old".
Has everything written by Fante by now been published, or is something still missing?
"Well, first of all there is the famous - or better badly famed - book on Philippinos, from which Marcos published some chapters (Italian title "I piccoli fratelli"). The book exists, though unfinished, there are over one hundred pages of it. Up to now Ms Joyce Fante has not allowed permission to publish, since she finds it a bit obscene, desecrating. I spoke to Cooper who told me instead that the book is of great beauty. There is then another book for children, that he wrote in collaboration with Rudolph Borchert, "Bravo Burro!", published in 1970 and I believe it will sooner or later be published in Italian too. And then there are all his screenplays that could be published".
The final question can only be on the Abruzzese traditions. What was their influence on John Fante's works?
"In my opinion, there is nothing from Abruzzo. And there is everything from Abruzzo. I will explain now: if we look better, the best Italian American literature is from Abruzzo, and I would like to add, Basilicata and Calabria, those regions that are rarely mentioned, usually forgotten. It is not by chance that the best Italian American writers came - or had their origins - in these regions, whose people are typical for their reserved, and very proud, character. These are the areas of Italy that had most things to say, they were the most ancient areas that resented American modernity. It was only natural that these people would show a stronger opposition. It is not a mere coincidence, and I want to emphasis this belief, that there are no great Italian American writers from large cities like Naples or Bari whereas there are two from such a small place as Introdacqua! Now, to get back to my original paradox, under this point of view, much in Fante is from Abruzzo. But if you want to do a philological study of his origins there is little. And after all, the important Abruzzo was what one has in one's heart, and that was what Fante surely had in him".
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