Wait Until Spring, Bandini

By John Fante

He came along, kicking the snow. Here was a disgusted man. His name was Svevo Bandini, and he lived three blocks down that street. 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. The macaroni in that box was not paid for. He had thought of that as he placed the cardboard inside his shoes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: May 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9780062013170

John Fante

John Fante began writing in 1929 and published his first short story in 1932. His first novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, was published in 1938 and was the first of his Arturo Bandini series of novels, which also include The Road to Los Angeles and Ask the Dust. A prolific screenwriter, he was stricken with diabetes in 1955. Complications from the disease brought about his blindness in 1978 and, within two years, the amputation of both legs. He continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce, and published Dreams from Bunker Hill, the final installment of the Arturo Bandini series, in 1982. He died on May 8, 1983, at the age of seventy-four.

Reviews for Wait Until Spring, Bandini

[dubuquer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Carnegie-Stout Public library in Dubuque has several novels and short-story collections by one of America's most underappreciated writers of literary fiction, John Fante (1909-1983).Fante’s debut novel, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, is a semiautobiographical story about a young Italian American boy, Arturo Bandini, who lives in small-town, Depression-era Colorado. During "the deep days, the sad days" of a hard winter, when Arturo's out-of-work immigrant father disappears and his mother suffers a breakdown, Arturo becomes obsessed with Rosa, his beautiful classmate at Catholic school who barely acknowledges him.When Wait Until Spring, Bandini was published in 1938, columnist Lee Shippey of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It is a book of veracity and understanding and contains scenes no reader will ever forget ... there is a lot of heartbreak and bitterness in it." And when John Fante wrote about Arturo Bandini again in Ask the Dust in 1939, this next novel soon became known as "the greatest novel ever written about Los Angeles."If you enjoy literary fiction but haven't heard of John Fante, or if you're just interested in a story about growing up Catholic in a small town, check out Wait Until Spring, Bandini.

[julian.ei · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I always enjoyed the Bandini stories. I can feel his impoverished pain, his desire for a connection. Fante is a gem in American writing.

[rimbo90 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like I have seen in a lot of other comments about this book, I discovered Fante via Bukowski. This, to date, is the only book I have read by him but I found it brilliant. Very absorbing and beautiful. I really ought to finish the quartet when I can as I have heard things really get going in The Road to Los Angeles and Ask the Dust.

[blanderson-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Choppy opening, before Fante hits his pissed off, nihilistic stride. Heartwarming and funny, the sort of stories where you feel bad for someone and want to wring their neck at the same time.