For more info or tickets, visit https://esotouric.com/fante-4-27-19/
[https://esotouric.com/fante-4-27-19/] Early editions of this tour
lamented John Fante’s obscurity. Then on April 8, 2010, the City of
Los Angeles declared the corner of 5th & Grand (next to Central
Library) “John Fante Square.” Today John Fante might be best
described as the most famous unknown writer in America. Climb aboard
to hear his story and that of the lost neighborhood where he found his
voice. Before Kerouac, before Bukowski, there was John Fante, author
of “Ask the Dust,” “Dreams of Bunker Hill,” “Full of
Life,” “The Road to Los Angeles” and “Wait Until Spring,
Bandini.” This five-novel cycle, written over sixty years,
introduced the world to Arturo Bandini, an outspoken, down-and-out Mr.
Hyde to Fante’s Dr. Jekyll. As Bunker Hill’s prodigal son,
Fante-as-Bandini chronicles a forgotten Los Angeles neighborhood
teeming with immigrants, criminals and dreamers like himself. With
genuine compassion and wonderful craft, he sketches the hopes and
dreams which fly round their heads, and in the process finds his own
voice, a revelation which carries him all the way to Hollywood. Once
there, distracted by fame and fortune, he settled for easy answers and
lost his way as an artist. But at the end, he came home to the heart
of the city and the hard years where he found his voice. “Dreams of
Bunker Hill” was dictated by a blind Fante two years before his
death, and “Road to Los Angeles” was published posthumously.
Bunker Hill is gone now, flattened, its mansions torn down, long since
redeveloped by corporate and civic interests. But in today’s
downtown communities the same stories play out, in thriving
micro-climates where artists and writers find their way, some are
making it big, others breaking up on the reef. Arturo Bandini is alive
and well, and his lament is as relevant today as it was in 1939. So
please join us as we follow in his footsteps, to the Goodwill store,
the King Eddy Saloon, Central Library, aboard the newly-restored
Angels Flight Railway, and other evocative scenes of old L.A. This
tour is a meditation not only on John Fante, but the city’s
endangered public space. The depopulation of Bunker Hill in the early
1960s became the benchmark for Community Redevelopment across the
country, and soon a cautionary tale of urban planning hubris. Now that
corporate interests have decided to repopulate Downtown with
market-rate housing and private security forces, the poor are again
left in the cold. But public space can be saved and Arturo Bandini can
lead the way.
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28/04/2019 Last update