To be honest, I had never heard of Dan Fante until catching the end of an interview he gave with Terry Gross earlier this week. He’s a writer, the son of a famous writer and a very interesting person who has dealt with many demons in life. He had a very introspective, thoughtful way about answering the few questions, which made my ears perk up, and then, something I think even the interviewer didn’t believe would happen, happened. Dan Fante cried, sort of began to sob when asked to read a favorite passage from one of his father’s books—a man he never got along with but eventually learned to “understand.” (For the record, Dan Fante’s father, John, as a writer Charles Bukowski hailed as "my God" and basically made the elder Fante famous with his praise.)
Dan Fante is a guy who put himself through a meat slicer of life and, once through it, decided to make himself into a steak— or, after that terrible metaphor, become better for it. What I like most about him is that he doesn’t mess around; he’s blunt, crude, descriptive, all-in, balls-up honest. How can you not admire a guy with a volume of poetry titled “A Gin-Pissing-Raw-Meat-Dual-Carburetor-V8-Son-Of-A-BitchFrom Los Angeles.” Seriously?
But serious he is. Dan’s life was tragically drug and alcoholically influenced for years until he found sobriety the better part of a decade or two ago. Rather than ignore his past, Fante decided to create an alter-ego, Bruno Dante, who is very much like him during his days of using. If this sounds insane, it might be, but when hearing him talk about it, the whole arrangement sounds more like great therapy than a man writing a fictional memoir of his “bad” years.
Again, I am newly introduced to this author so will not fully form an opinion until I read one of his books, but he has written a poem from the volume referenced above that I can’t get out of my head. Some of the lines ring so true to me that it’s worth sharing:
Asking
For years I thought that
talking to the Gods
was an exercise
done privately
under
unforgiving
distant stars
ridiculous unrequited prayer
done by staring
at old cold books
with mean small print
But then I discovered
that just
ain’t
it at all
God can be found in the ‘thank you’ voice of the guy at the counter
at the 7-11
or
the quietness of a stranger’s parking lot smile
or
the rattle of weeds across a dry summer Mojave
or
watching my untethered fingers jump jump jumping
across the keys
deep in the middle of typing three hours worth of truth
God – for me – turned out to be
a conscious choice
a self-evoked experience
just
like
love
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