{"id":3037,"date":"2010-01-05T08:09:03","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T12:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=3037"},"modified":"2016-06-05T14:48:20","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T18:48:20","slug":"john-fante-wait-until-spring-bandini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/01\/05\/john-fante-wait-until-spring-bandini\/","title":{"rendered":"John Fante: Wait Until Spring, Bandini<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Wait Until Spring, Bandini<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\r\nby John Fante (1938)<\/span>\r\nEcco (2002)<\/span>\r\n266 pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
For the last few years, ever since I started blogging, I’ve seen periodic\u00a0posts on John Fante on my favorite bloggers’ pages (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>).\u00a0Fante became the author I was\u00a0going to check out next — always next.\u00a0A bit before the holidays, I was in the bookstore with my wife\u00a0trying to decide between purchasing a Richard Russo or a John Fante.\u00a0I told her that I thought\u00a0I would hold off on the Russo, that I wanted to read him closer to Pulitzer season,\u00a0that it might be better to wait until spring.\u00a0Wait Until Spring, Bandini<\/em> was the title I saw when I picked up the Fante book.\u00a0This unintentional repetition of phrase was enough to convince me to purchase\u00a0Fante’s first Bandini book. Once I began it, I couldn’t stop reading it.\u00a0It is remarkable.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
I was born and raised in Idaho.\u00a0Though I now live in the East, I’m proud of my western heritage.\u00a0I have read a number of books by Western American authors (Fante was born in Colorado and died in Los Angeles). I even took a class on Western American authors at my Western American school (this doesn’t mean the books were “Westerns”). John Fante’s name never came up.\u00a0And neither did this excellent\u00a0book. I suspect there are several reasons for this.\u00a0 KevinfromCanada brought to my attention\u00a0the fact that shortly after\u00a0Wait Until Spring, Bandini<\/em>\u00a0was published\u00a0Fante’s publishing house couldn’promote it due to a pesky lawsuit with\u00a0Adolph Hitler. For much of his life, Fante’s novels were unavailable, basically unknown, so there’s a reason we didn’t discuss his books.<\/p>\n
But I think there’s another reason, also brought up by KevinfromCanada: Western American literature is often known for its\u00a0landscape.\u00a0What’s Steinbeck without Monterrey Bay or Route 66? What’s Willa Cather without the New Mexico desert or\u00a0the passing seasons on the open plains of Nebraska? Jack London just wouldn’t be Jack London without the Klondike — indeed, I remember rereading “To Build a Fire” on one hot summer day only to feel like I should put on a blanket. That’s only to name a few. Nature is a major character in these novels. Not so with\u00a0Wait Until\u00a0Spring, Bandini<\/em>.\u00a0This book takes place in Colorado during the 1920s, but other than the bitter cold, which could easily\u00a0be\u00a0situated elsewhere, this particular novel has almost no connection to the natural setting.<\/p>\n
In another shift from the conventional Western American novel,\u00a0this book focuses intimately on a family of Italian immigrants. Or, rather, the parents are Italian immigrants; the children are pure American.\u00a0At least, that’s what they’d like to be perceived as.\u00a0The\u00a0problem of American identity in immigrant societies is,\u00a0excepting the themes of Asian-American identity in more contemporary works, much more typical of Eastern American\u00a0literature. While I’m sure there are many exceptions —\u00a0possibly even enough to break down the categories entirely — such is the generalization. Even Cather’s Norwegian immigrants didn’t seem to struggle with identity when they were settling Nebraska.\u00a0They struggled with the land.<\/p>\n
Svevo Bandini\u00a0works as a bricklayer in what is now Boulder, Colorado.\u00a0The book begins in mid-December, and\u00a0there is practically no work this winter.\u00a0Svevo is defeated and ashamed.<\/p>\n
He came along, kicking the deep snow.\u00a0Here was a disgusted man. His name was Svevo Bandini, and he lived three blocks down that street.\u00a0 He was cold and there were holes in his shoes. That morning he had patched the holes on the inside with pieces of cardboard from a macaroni box.\u00a0The macaroni in that box was not paid for.\u00a0He had thought of that as he placed the cardboard inside of his shoes.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fante uses an extremely close third-person narrator to present the rhythms in his characters’ minds.\u00a0We get an incredible opening chapter where Bandini comes home and silently festers\u00a0as his wife attempts to comfort him; he even silently festers about<\/em>his wife’s attempts to comfort him.\u00a0It is bitter, and the sentence structure\u00a0matches the building tension, creating a wonderful\u00a0tone wherein we can feel Bandini about to\u00a0snap. Fortunately, that night\u00a0he and his wife Maria find another way to release his tension.<\/p>\n
The close narrator moves from Svevo to his wife Maria. She\u00a0loves her husband deeply.\u00a0She is very proud of him, and very attracted to his virility and his volatility.\u00a0We also get a sense for her deep care and empathy for her three sons, Arturo, August, and Federico, fourteen, twelve, and ten respectively.\u00a0She is a calming presence in\u00a0a house\u00a0full of male angst: Svevo is proud and bitter; Arturo follows after his father and can barely control his violent impulses even as he lusts after his classmate Rosa; August is a staunch Catholic, the most religious male in the household, destined to become a priest, and increasingly upset at how his brother and father act; Federico is just a little boy still, but we can feel the guilt already rising in him.\u00a0Underlying all of this\u00a0is the fact that the family cannot afford to feed itself:<\/p>\n
So it was with all the debts of Svevo Bandini.\u00a0There was no mystery about them.\u00a0There were no hidden motives, no desire to cheat in their non-payment.\u00a0No budget could solve them.\u00a0No planned economy could alter them.\u00a0It was very simple: the Bandini family used up more money than he earned.\u00a0He knew his only escape lay in a streak of good luck.\u00a0His tireless presumption that such good luck was coming forestalled his complete desertion and kept him from blowing out his brains.\u00a0He constantly threatened both, but did neither.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As I said above, the writing is superb —\u00a0economical,\u00a0direct,\u00a0well paced.\u00a0But the story it is telling matches the writing in vigor and flux.\u00a0In the face of an imminent visit from Maria’s terribly judgmental mother, Svevo Bandini deserts his family for ten days,\u00a0finally\u00a0returning only\u00a0on Christmas Eve. During this time, Maria tries to keep her faith in him, but her faith in him wanes as there is more and more evidence that he is living with a rich widow.\u00a0The internal pressure in the house continues to grow despite the fact that Bandini\u00a0is absent.\u00a0Here is a great but typical example of how well Fante builds up and controls the fluctuating emotions with his sentences and with his perspective:<\/p>\n
Strange times. It was an evening of only living and breathing.\u00a0They sat around the stove and waited for something to happen. Federico crawled to her chair and placed his hand on her knee.\u00a0Still in prayer, she shook her head like one hypnotized. It was her way of telling Federico not to interrupt her, or to touch her, to leave her alone.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That last sentence — “not to interrupt her, or to touch her, to leave her alone” —\u00a0with its increasingly frantic content and clipped pace, perfectly exemplifies the skill with which Fante controls this story.\u00a0 he passage continues:<\/span><\/p>\n
The next morning she was her old self, tender and smiling through breakfast.\u00a0The eggs had been prepared “Mamma’s way,” a special treat, the yolks filmed by the whites.\u00a0And would you look at her! Hair combed tightly, her eyes big and bright. When Federico dumped his third spoonful of sugar into his coffee cup, she remonstrated with mock sternness.<\/span><\/p>\n
“Not that way, Federico! Let me show you.”<\/span><\/p>\n
She emptied the cup into the sink.<\/span><\/p>\n
“If you want a sweet cup of coffee, I’ll give it to you.”\u00a0She placed the sugar bowl instead of the coffee cup on Federico’s saucer.\u00a0The bowl was half full of sugar.\u00a0She filled it the rest of the way with coffee. Even August laughed, though he had to admit there might be a sin in it — wastefulness.<\/span><\/p>\n
Federico tasted it suspiciously.<\/span><\/p>\n
“Swell,” he said.\u00a0“Only there’s no room for the cream.”<\/span><\/p>\n
She laughed, clutching her throat, and they were glad to see her happy, but she kept on laughing, pushing her chair away and bending over with laughter.\u00a0It wasn’t that funny; it couldn’t be. They watched her miserably, her laughter not ending even though their blank faces stared at her.\u00a0They saw her eyes fill up with tears, her face swelling to purple.\u00a0She got up, one hand over her mouth, and staggered to the sink.\u00a0She drank a glass of water until it spluttered in her through and she could not go on, and finally she staggered into the bedroom and lay on the bed, where she laughed.<\/span><\/p>\n
Now she was quiet again.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0They arose from the table and looked in at her on the bed. She was rigid, her eyes like buttons in a doll, a funnel of vapors pouring from her panting mouth and into the cold air.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I marvel at the way Fante moves from that frantic “to leave her alone” to hopefulness and even to tenderness before forcing us to descend with the sons into a realization of how disturbed Maria is.\u00a0The whole book is like this.\u00a0Fante is such a superb close narrator that we go up and down with the characters, revising the narrative we’ve read\u00a0as they are forced to\u00a0revise the narrative in which they live.\u00a0Fantastic writing.\u00a0Fantastic book. I was propelled to the end, never wanting to put it down. I’m thrilled that this is the first book of a quartet (the rest, I believe, focusing on Arturo as he comes of age and embarks on a life as a writer in Los Angeles). But Wait Until\u00a0Spring, Bandini<\/em> stands on its own just fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews John Fante’s Wait Until Spring, Bandini<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,164],"tags":[926,927],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-3037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-john-fante","tag-1930s","tag-927"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Wait-Until-Spring-Bandini.jpg?fit=349%2C530&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-MZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3037"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18379,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3037\/revisions\/18379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3037"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}