It all began in a bookstore in Westwood in 1974.
Stephen Cooper stumbled upon a copy of “Ask the Dust,” the masterpiece of the late Los Angeles writer John Fante, which had been out of print for over 40 years.
“I was just floored by how powerful it was,” said Cooper, a California State University, Long Beach English professor who would eventually publish “Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante” in 2000.
Now, a century after Fante’s birth on April 8, 1909, the UCLA Library has acquired Fante’s literary papers.
The collection totals 27 linear feet in archives, including original manuscripts, heavily annotated short stories and screenplays, business records, awards, periodicals, over 240 letters of correspondence, his high school scrapbook, his original Hermes typewriter and a lock of his hair.
Housed in the Department of Special Collections in the Charles E. Young Research Library, the collection was packed up on March 31 and will be accessible to the public around the end of the summer.
“The acquisition of John Fante’s papers is a major coup for the library and the university,” said English professor Rafael Perez-Torres. “The Fante papers offer an unprecedented opportunity to study in a sustained and serious way the literary contributions of a major Los Angeles writer almost lost to history.”
This acquisition is therefore momentous not only for the sheer volume of literary papers that it contains, but also because of Fante’s relevance to the history of Los Angeles and the Californian experience, said Genie Guerard, manuscripts librarian of special collections at the Young Research Library.
“Fante was way ahead of his time,” Cooper said. “Although his early works were well received by the critics, they didn’t really sell very well. Among other things, Fante exposes certain parts of American culture that were back then difficult for a lot of people to accept, for example American racism.”
Cooper added that Fante wrote honestly about problems of ethnic discrimination, cruelty and violence.
However, since Fante’s death in 1983 and the reprinting of his work, Fante’s reputation has been rising rapidly, especially in Europe, Cooper said.
Throughout this time, Joyce Fante had safeguarded her husband’s literary papers, finally allowing access to Cooper in order to compose Fante’s biography.
At a party celebrating its publication in 2000, the Fante family met Victoria Steele, the former head of special collections at UCLA.
Steele, through maintained correspondence with the Fante family over the years, came to influence their decision to give the literary papers to UCLA, said Fante’s daughter, Victoria Fante Cohen.
More than that, however, Cohen explained that it was truly a family decision to give her father’s literary papers to UCLA, based on his kinship with Los Angles and reputation as a predominantly Californian writer.
“We had other choices. My father is well known and well regarded throughout Europe,” said Cohen, “But I know that UCLA is the right place for those papers. I wanted his papers at a university where he could be studied by students and scholars from around the world. It was a very heartfelt decision.”
Fante’s insight into the cultural and social atmosphere of Los Angeles has put him on a ground comparable to other greats such as H. L. Mencken, John Steinbeck, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Chandler and Fante’s best friend Carey McWilliams, said Guerard.
“He provides a very unique perspective and point of view and really gets into details of Los Angeles as a physical and spiritual place,” Guerard said. “His papers will be joined with other literary papers that help people understand the ties and the ways their quests intersect.”
Born in 1909 to a poor Italian American family in Colorado, Fante’s quest into the realm of writing began when he hitchhiked to California in his early 20s. Although he initially worked a variety of tough blue-collar jobs, he also began to write short stories.
He soon worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, and throughout his life he was torn between screenwriting and stories like “Ask the Dust,” which captured his true passions, Cooper said.
“Many consider Fante to be the patron saint of Los Angeles writing, mostly because of the life he lived and the way he captures the spirit of the city,” Cooper said. “Writers who have come after him, especially young writers, really acknowledge his importance and influence.”