Ask the Dust

"I won’t say this is the book that made me want to be a writer, because I always wanted to be that, but it solidified my insistence on becoming some hopelessly young, starving misfit awash in an urban landscape somewhere, working my ass off, just really throwing my heart out there and getting it kicked around. Ask the Dust is just a really powerful book for me. It’s a chronicle of the immigrant experience in America in the 1930s. Yes, he’s first generation Italian-American, so it’s about that first generation of immigration experience, wanting to outrun the shadow of your ancestors, and truly be American. One of the very powerful ways that that manifests itself in the story is Arturo’s attitude towards the Mexican girl that he’s really in love with. He demeans her, and looks down on her and calls her a dirty Mexican to elevate himself. There’s just something so raw and true about it. He’s quite quixotic, full of fear and arrogance. The prose of the novel is pretty straight ahead, but just so muscular and very 1930s. Yes, Arturo Bandini is a pretty thinly veiled John Fante."