46 pages • 1 hour read
John FanteAsk The Dust
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1939A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The novel is narrated by Arturo Bandini, a young Italian American living in a hotel in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles and struggling to make a living as a writer. He is five weeks late on his rent to his landlady, Mrs. Hargraves, who is threatening to evict him if he does not “pay up” (1). So far, he has published one short story, called “The Little Dog Laughed,” which brought him some money and critical acclaim. He is particularly proud of the fact that it was published by the distinguished New York editor, J. C. Hackmuth. While he has long since spent his earnings from the story, he clings to this published story as proof that he has the potential to become a great writer.
As he walks through the streets of Los Angeles to his hotel, Arturo reflects on his days since first arriving in the city from Colorado five months ago. He longs for a woman in his life and finds himself particularly attracted to the “Mexican girls” he sees around the city (15).He thinks of the letters that he writes his mother, a devout Catholic still living in Colorado, in which he assures her that he still attends mass and begs her for money to help him pay the rent. He also describes the letters he writes to his editor, Hackmuth, in which he discusses his anxieties about writing and his inability to think of new ideas for stories. In the letter to Hackmuth, he describes a recent sexual encounter with a woman but admits to the reader that the story is made up.
Chapter 2 Summary
At only twenty years old, Arturo feels as if he still has many years ahead of him to write a book and thus should focus on doing more to enjoy life. He fears that his “ignorance of life,” specifically his inexperience with women, is keeping him from developing as a writer (18). He therefore resolves “to write a love story, to learn about life” (18).He receives a check in the mail from his mother and decides to go out on the town to find a prostitute. As he leaves, he thinks back to a night when he was still living in Denver and tried to have sex with a prostitute but found himself blocked by “thoughts about the Blessed Virgin and thou shalt not commit adultery” (19). As he walks through the streets by night, he admits to himself that he wants to become a rich and famous writer to prove himself to the people who knew him back in Colorado as the son of poor immigrants.
Arturo goes to a burlesque showand then to the Church of our Lady, in the Mexican Quarter. Although he now considers himself an atheist, he still kneels down to pray and asks God to “make a great writer out of [him]” (22). After leaving the church, he is solicited by a prostitute but turns her down. He is pleased to have at least been asked and soon begins to regret his response. He imagines himself as the famous writer Bandini telling reporters that his advice to young writers is to “never evade a new experience” and attributing his Nobel-winning book to an experience with a prostitute that happened to him one night in Los Angeles (23). He decides to go back to the prostitute, but when he finds her again, she is walking with a “tall Mexican” man to the brothel where she works (23). Arturo waits for them outside. After the man leaves, the woman sees Arturo and invites him in. He goes with her upstairs and is disgusted by the state of her room. She tries to have sex with him, but he tells her that he just wants to talk. He explains that he is a writer gathering material for a book and will pay her extra if she will talk to him about her profession. The woman keeps trying to entice him, but Arturo is disgusted by her. After giving her eight dollars–four times as much as she charges–in trying to get her to talk with him, he leaves.
Chapter 3 Summary
Arturo buys fruit from the Japanese market near the hotel and goes back to his room to write at his typewriter. He hears a knock at the door, and his neighbor, Mr. Hellfrick, an alcoholic who owes Arturo money, enters. Hellfrick asks Arturo if he likes milk and tells him that since the driver of the milk truck is a friend of his, Arturo should feel free to help himself to milk from the truck while his friend is up in his room having “a drink of gin” (29). Arturo rejects Hellfrick’s suggestion and tells him that his plan is “contemptible” (29). After Hellfrick leaves, however, Arturo begins to long for milk and goes to his neighbor’s room to tell him that he’s changed his mind. While in Hellfrick’s room, he asks if he could have the money that Hellfrick owes him, but Hellfrick tells him that he is broke and cannot even pay him part of it. Instead, he says that he will make sure that Arturo gets “all the milk [he] needs” (30). That night, before stealing the milk, he imagines himself once again as Bandini, the famous author, “protégé of J. C. Hackmuth,” brought to court over a “petty thief charge” for stealing milk (31). Bandini explains that the theft was all part of his research for a story called “The Milk Thief” (31). After imagining this tale, Arturothinks about the fact that in reality he is not famous and will simply be sent to the city jail like any ordinary criminal. He continues working on a very long letter to Hackmuth, which he is writing since he cannot think of ideas for stories. He hears a knock on Hellfrick’s door and, knowing it must be the milkman, leaves his room to go steal a few bottles from the milk truck. He goes back to his room with “two full quart bottles” only to discover that it is buttermilk, “a kind of milk [he hates]” (33).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
At the beginning of Ask the Dust, Arturo has just arrived in the big city from the relatively small town of Boulder, Colorado in search of creative and romantic fulfillment. In many ways, he is the quintessential protagonist of a coming-of-age story. He is young, idealistic, and shows great promise as a writer; however, he is also arrogant, immature, and naïve about what it will take to succeed as a writer. Fante emphasizes the extent to which being a writer is a central part of Arturo’s identity. Arturo is constantly thinking in terms of writing and literature and imagining the point at which he will become the next great American writer. Although his tendency to constantly imagine himself as a rich and famous author initially comes across as narcissistic, it is gradually revealed that part of the reason that he wants to succeed so badly as a writer is because he wants to prove himself to the people he grew up around in Colorado, where he was known as the son of poor immigrants and made fun of because of his Italian ancestry.
When the novel opens, Arturo finds himself in financial difficulties after failing to produce any new work following the publication of his first successful short story, “The Little Dog Laughed.” He cannot even afford simple luxuries like milk. Above all, Arturo worries that his writer’s block is caused by the fact that he has yet to experience much of life. He is deeply insecure about the fact that he has not had sex. He conflates his current frustration with writing with his sexual frustration and his desire for a woman in his life. The first chapter also implies that Arturo is particularly attracted to Hispanic women, whom he describes as “Aztec princesses and Mayan princesses” (15). Although Arturo has not yet met Camilla, his “Mayan princess,” these remarks anticipate the way in which he will often fetishize Camilla’s Mexican ancestry.
Arturo’s attitudes toward sex are complicated by his Catholic faith. Although he is no longer a practicing Catholic, he cannot escape the guilt about his sexuality that was instilled in him during his Catholic upbringing. When he tries to have sex with prostitutes, first in Denver, before coming to Los Angeles, and then with the blond prostitute whom he encounters in Chapter 2, he is blocked by thoughts of the “Blessed Virgin” and the commandment thou shalt not commit adultery, two aspects of Catholicism that underline the church’s attitudes toward sexuality. Nonetheless, he remains somewhat attracted to religion for superficial reasons. He admits to going to mass mainly so he can stare at all the Mexican girls in attendance, and when he goes into the Church of Our Lady “for sentimental reasons,” in Chapter 2, he says a prayer telling God that he will return to the church if God makes him a great writer. He therefore occasionally looks to religion as a possible solution to his problems with writing and women.
