Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In Ask the Dust (1939) and Dreams from Bunker Hill (1983), John Fante (1909-1983) represents the obliterated side of American life during the Great Depression by making use of an apparently simple narrative style. Besides focusing on the importance of the marginal side of the United States in the 1930s, Fante presents young Arturo Bandini as the protagonist who survives in Los Angeles during the economic crisis and aims at becoming a great writer that contends for space in the cultural market of the metropolis of entertainment. Through obscene vocabulary and scenes, Fante represents the most negative aspects experienced by those who live in a metropolis, such as isolation, solitude, vice, and madness. Therefore, Fante s fiction has thematic and formal aspects that allow us to establish relations with the New Realism, a movement of the Arts in the first half of the twentieth century, which also crudely explored the negative aspects of life in the United States. Thus, this study discusses the potential meaningfulness of thematic and aesthetic aspects of Ask the Dust and Dreams from Bunker Hill, two novels that present the relation established by the writer, who is an outsider, with the city, the people, and the craft of writing in modern times. / Em Ask the Dust (1939) e Dreams from Bunker Hill (1983), John Fante (1909-1983) representa o lado esquecido da vida estadunidense durante o período da Grande Depressão por meio de uma estética aparentemente simples. Além de dar enfoque e devida importância ao lado marginal dos Estados Unidos da década de 1930, Fante apresenta como protagonista o jovem Arturo Bandini que, durante a crise econômica, sobrevive em Los Angeles com a ambição de ser um grande escritor que disputa espaço em meio ao mercado cultural da metrópole do entretenimento. Por meio de vocabulário e cenas marcadas por obscenidade, Fante cria representações dos aspectos mais negativos que a vida na metrópole pode proporcionar aos sujeitos, tais como isolamento, solidão, vícios e loucura. Assim, sua obra apresenta aspectos temáticos e formais que permitem aproximá-la do Novo Realismo, movimento das artes plásticas da primeira metade do século XX que também explorou de forma crua os aspectos negativos da vida nos Estados Unidos. Desse modo, discutem-se neste estudo significados potenciais dos aspectos temático-estéticos de Ask the Dust e Dreams from Bunker Hill, romances que abordam a relação do escritor outsider com a cidade, as pessoas e o ofício da escrita nos tempos modernos.

The Road to Los Angeles, the first novel written by Italian-American author John Fante, is most often recognized as a tale concerned with Italian-American alienation, xenophobia and existence on the periphery of mainstream society. This essay, however, aims to analyze the novel from the viewpoint of fetishism. Fetishism, a motif that constitutes a vast theoretical field in itself, will be analyzed using the lens of Freudian theory and more recent works by critics such as Louise J. Kaplan and Johanna Malt. While fetishism unproblematically can be defined as the misdirection of libidinal energy, and the objectification of a sexual object’s seductive powers, this essay also aims to throw light on the intricate nature and general applicability of fetishism. Fante depicts fetishism as essentially oxymoronic in its presence-absence duality, as instrumental in animating the inanimate and dehumanizing  the sexual object. Fetishism, which in many ways shares an affinity with scopophilia and voyeurism, is essentially semiotic and instrumental in projecting the will onto the external world. Moreover, read through the lens of the inherent death drive, as theorized by Sigmund Freud, manifestations of brutal violence and self-torture are seen as  direct counterparts to fetishism.