Book Review: Dan Fante, Corksucker

reviewed by anna battista

After the Bruno Dante trilogy of novels (Chump Change , Mooch and Spitting Off Tall Buildings, Dan Fante comes back with an anthology of short stories. Inspired by the years Fante spent as a cab driver, the eight tales collected in Corksucker – two of them, "Marble Man" and "Caveat Emptor", already published on the net a few years ago - recount the days spent driving under the roasting LA sunshine, haunted by alcoholic madness, trying to rescue failed relationships and suffering from writer's block.

Even though there is a trace of originality in "Princess", featuring two main deranged characters, Libby and Bitch, and their greedy pet python, most of the other tales in this thin volume of short stories go through the same pattern: driving a run down cab-having problems with alcohol-battling depression-getting dumped by girlfriends-meeting a bunch of unbalanced individuals while working in the cab business. In a nutshell, imagine Night on Earth by Jim Jarmusch without its original, funny and tragic moments, and its variations on the theme.

No matter whatever Dan Fante fans say about the injustice of comparing him to Charles Bukowski, he sounds like Bukowski here, while in his constantly remarking us that he wants to write but suffers from writer's block, you can trace his father's Bandini's thirst for writing and publishing. The most unnerving thing in this anthology is anyway the spelling: how Italian names such as Michelangelo, Carrara and Versace, just to mention a few, are spelt will have you definitely cringing.

Perhaps if Corksucker had been a work-in-progress book of notes for a film in episodes, you feel you would have forgiven Fante, after all, the tale "TheBobby" is already set in screenplay mode. It would be better for Fante if he would stop selling his old tales to publishers all around the world, get on with his life, and perhaps even work on that screenplay he claimed he was writing four or five years ago.

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