Ask the Dust (P.S.) - John Fante

Another sophmore effort by a writer that comes off as nothing more than an inflated ego. The story of Arturo Bandini can be regarded as realistic, gritty and uncompromising, but considering the view point comes from Bandini himself it tends to be just self indulgent. Bandini (of course an up and coming writer) thinks the world of his own struggles and heartaches that he makes them to be quests of truth and struggle with great adversity. His romance with a waitress comes off as a sick obsession but is masked as true and earnest. His character is the picture of inexperience, a youth old enough to believe his greatness but not be old enough to realize its limitations. Our beloved narrator scolds the world and asks us to believe in him forthright. There is little growth by the end for us to believe a change will happen, but just an episode that will likely keep him to continue on the same path. The writing is also terrible and can be best described as a garage band version of professional writing. The point of the writing is to make the story more realistic, but considering the story didn't have a clue I'm going to assume the writing also came from incompetence as well. It isn't a credit to the author that the amateur Charles Bukowski is a great fan.