Review of John Fante's Ask the Dust

It is very rarely that I am enthralled by a book, seduced into and held hostage until the last sentence on the last page. Ask the Dust, John Fante's 1939 classic did just that. It starts with our hero Arturo Bandini, an aspiring and broke second generation Italian who moves from Boulder,Colorado to Los Angeles to succeed as a writer. The novel starts out with Bandini living in a rented hotel room surviving on oranges, cigarettes, and a huge ego. The novel is centered around his meeting and falling in love with Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress whose affair blossoms out of a battle of wills and a flurry of racist insults. We are introduced to a world of strange but likable characters such as Hellfrick a drunk neighbor whose taste for meat drives him to slaughter a calf, and Mr. Hackmuth, who we do not meet but understand his role through Bandini's unhealthy obsession with the editor. The story progresses as Camilla and Bandini continue their tumultuous relationship, with Bandini insulting her shoes and writing mediocre love poems the next until we find out that Camilla is in love with Sammy, a cook who has tuberculosis and whose disgust for his admirer becomes more pronounced as the book goes on. The novel progresses as Bandini inches into his success as a writer and his unrequited love falls apart mentally. The story ends with Camilla disappearing after Bandini buys her a house and a little white dog with his book advance. In this unusual antithesis of boys gets girl, Bandini does not get the girl, but gets the better option of fame and money.
There are several undercurrents to the book that make it interesting. Ask the Dust touches on the issues of ethnicity and class in 1930's America, there is a subtle disjuncture between how Bandini sees himself as an American and how others view him as an immigrant or non- white. There are several examples of Bandini being confronted with prejudices ( such as when Bandini arrives at the hotel and the landlady proclaims that they don't allow Mexicans) while simultaneously perhaps denying and projecting his Italianess ( there is a scene where Camilla points out that the colors of his eyes and hair are black, while he insists they are brown and then insults her ethnicity as a Mexican.)
There are several parts of the book where he goes from almost comical self loathing to narcissistic boasting in one page.His unabashedly self centered and grandiose nature is an interesting contrast to his fear of intimacy with women. He does not consummate his relationship with Camilla, even after she repeatedly throws herself at him, and is only able to lust after her when she is not around or when he is angry at her. His desperate desire for her manifests in stealing and sleeping with her hat and pretending he is with her when he is with other women. There is only one sexual incident in the book, with Vera Rivken, who is deformed so Bandini can barely look at her. What is puzzling is where this neuroses came from. Is it his relentless inability to function properly or merely the habits leftover from his Catholic upbringing? Either way, I would love to hate Bandini but I cannot bring myself do it. He is relatable, (regardless of it being written in 1939) because lets face it, we are all assholes, we just don't say what we think out loud.