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The Daily Stoic
It was mentioned as a favorite novel and its rediscovery by Robert Towne and Charles Bukowski was noted.
I think Ask the Dust is maybe my second favorite novel. That's a beautiful book.
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It was mentioned as a favorite novel and its rediscovery by Robert Towne and Charles Bukowski was noted.
I think Ask the Dust is maybe my second favorite novel. That's a beautiful book.
I love that movie. I love Ask the Dust.
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It was discussed as possibly the greatest novel ever written about Los Angeles; it was initially published by a small publisher, then lost to obscurity for a time due to a copyright infringement lawsuit, before being rediscovered in a Los Angeles public library and achieving renewed success, even being adapted into a film.
John Fontaine, this book called Ask the Dust which is maybe the greatest novel ever written about Los Angeles.
That novel came out as published by a small publisher and then it was lost to obscurity for some while there were some strange reasons.
It was lost to obscurity because his publisher also simultaneously in 1933 and in the fourth month that publishes a English translation of mine comp. And Hitler sues them for copyright infringement and wins in US federal court and bankrupts the publisher.
Except there is one company in the Los Angeles public library and Charles Coocausky is wandering around there one day and finds it and says it's like finding gold in the city dump.
And this is the height of Coocausky's fan. He brings the book back. John Fontaine enjoys this research and in the last couple years of his life, book sales millions of copies that's made into a very mediocre movie with Colin Farrell.
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Ryan Holliday mentioned this novel favorably, highlighting its connection to the author's own lived experience in the area where it's set. He expressed regret that he hadn't been exposed to it earlier in life.
John Fonte wrote this book Ask the Dust and like I discovered him much later I actually discovered him when I lived in LA because he sort of like he's considered kind of like the he and Bukowski are considered like the poet laureates of downtown Los Angeles and I lived in downtown Los Angeles and that's how I first heard about John Fonte I was walking down the street and was it fifth and fifth and all of I don't know there's an intersection in downtown LA called John Fonte Square and I you know Google did read this book became my favorite novel as I read more and more of his novels I'm reading one of them and it's set in Roseville which is also the town that I grew up in right and so that like I remember being like viscerally upset that like it's not like a lot of novelists hail from Roseville California and no point did any of my teachers did any of the local media did any did any did this ever come up in any way right and I think about what I'm lucky that I ended up growing up as someone who loved books and reading anyway but how much more might I have been sucked in to reading had I known that there was a novelist that came from where I came from and more importantly how much more empowered might I have felt as a kid from this random suburban town that I could do that thing professionally do you know what I mean