"Then one day [i.e. while in the Los Angeles Public Library] I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. 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. He was to be a lifetime influence on my writing."
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Novelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesScreenwriters from the United StatesBlind peoplePeople from Denver
Original Language: English
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Sources
Charles Bukowski - Introduction (dated 5 June 1979) to the republished Ask the Dust (1939, 1980)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Fante
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John Fante
John Fante (April 8, 1909 – May 8, 1983) was an American novelist, short-story and screenwriter of Italian descent. Author Dan Fante was one of his sons.
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