Full of Life
A Biography of John Fante
by Stephen Cooper
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Editions of Full of Life
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Paperback |
Publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux |
Date 2001 |
Price $4.20 |
 Used - Very Good |
 |
ISBN |
Binding/Format Hardcover |
Publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux |
Date 2000 |
Price $1.00 |
missing dust jacket |
Publisher Notes
The first biography of one of the great outsiders of American literature.
In the first comprehensive biography of John Fante, one of the great lost souls of twentieth-century literature, Stephen Cooper untangles the enigma of an authentic American original. By turns savage and poetic, violent and full of love, such underground novels as The Road to Los Angeles; Ask the Dust; and Wait Until Spring, Bandini simultaneously reveal and disguise their author.
Born in 1909 to poor Italian American parents in Colorado, Fante ventured west in 1930 to become a writer. Eventually settling in Los Angeles' faded downtown area of Bunker Hill, Fante starved between menial Depression-era jobs while writing story after story about the world he knew-full of poverty, hatred, and the madness of love. His first stories were published by H. L. Mencken in the American Mercury, but Fante also made a career in Hollywood working with the likes of Orson Welles and Darryl F. Zanuck.
By the time of his death, though, he was nearly forgotten. Fortunately, readers such as Charles Bukowski began to recognize that Ask the Dust stands alongside the best work of Nathanael West and Sherwood Anderson. This exacting and vivid biography will help secure Fante's place in the American literary pantheon.
Photographs
Notes/Bibliography/Index
Stephen Cooper is a lecturer in the departments of English and film and electronic arts at California State University at Long Beach.
Media Reviews
"Whether listing the many film ventures, the arguments between John and Joyce or the symptoms of Fante's worsening diabetes, Cooper is a studious and enthusiastic chronicler of the minutiae of Fante's life. It is an admirable practice but at times overwrought, as when he transcribes a video made of Fante when he was hospitalized, near death and obviously pitifully confused. Here and in a few other places, Cooper's well-informed summary would suffice. Still, FULL OF LIFE offers a large share of fascinating material by and about Fante, and by bringing together his life and work for the first time with such clarity of purpose, Cooper presents a remarkable gift to innumerable fans of Fante's work."
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