Number 99 - Chump Change - Dan Fante

 

Dan Fante is the son of Jon Fante.  As any people who read these reviews regularly will know, I discovered Jon Fante entirely by chance a couple of years back because I liked the title of one of his books (1933 was a bad year). he rapidly became a firm favourite of mine. 

I'm close to having read everything Jon Fante ever published and I wondered if the talent ran in the family. So I ordered this online - his books don't show up in Waterstones the way his dad's do - and I'm so glad I did.

The unflinching gaze at the underbelly of life is well and truly present in the writings of both father and son. 

This book is one of the most disturbing things I've read this year.  I find myself hoping that it is complete fiction and not based on Dan Fante's real life.

However - the lead character is Bruno Dante.  His father is Jonathan Dante -  a novelist and screenwriter dying from diabetes. We meet him in the book, lying on his deeathbed, a shriveled husk of his former self with no lower legs due to his illness, and only breathing through a sheer refusal to die just yet. Jon Fante died of diabetes - he too had lost his feet to the disease. 

 Jonathan Dante's book that is referenced in this is called Ask the Wind.  The last of the Bandini novels was Ask the Dust. There are so many similarities between Jonathan Date and Jon Fante it's impossible to surmise anything other than Dan wrote his father into this book under a very thin veil indeed.

Given that the father character IS his real life father, how much of the character of Bruno is Dan Fante?  

Bruno is not a nice man.  He's an out of control alcoholic with a mean streak a mile wide and totally self destructive.  We meet him first when he's released from rehab a few days early so his wife can take him back to LA to see his father before he dies.

What follows is a compulsive and horrifically readable account of alcoholism and a crash to the bottom. I'm not sure Dante makes one good decision at any stage of the book. We certainly can't root for him and his behaviour. We can't sympathise in the slightest.  But Fante's prose makes us understand him and empathise. We can hope that he might turn a corner somewhere, but it never seems likely. This spiral is a bad one. The only thing close to a redeeming feature is his attempts to look after the dog, and he's not even very good at doing that.

This book messed with my dreams and gave me a sleepless night. Most horror novels I read don't manage that. His depiction of broken humanity is so convincing that it hits on a deep deep level. However there are shafts of humour shining through. This isn't a misery memoir.  It's compelling in part because of the jet black humour used to illuminate the darkness.

I will certainly be tracking down more of his work.  He truly manages to carry on his father's legacy.