Spitting Off Tall Buildings

Rating:
Summary: The Final Chapter?
Review: I have been waiting two years to hear what happens to Bruno Dante - and I wasn't disappointed. SPITTING OFF TALL BUILDINGS it seems to this reader, is more of a predecessor to CHUMP CHANGE and MOOCH than a follow up. But that doesn't matter. Once again Dan Fante's literary skill is - dare I say it - dazzling! Few if any American writers today can go where Fante goes: To the belly of the beast. In an age of glitz and junk food sedatives mister Fante words stand out fearlessly. This is America in 2002. Loss, passion, humor, and disillusionment. A man's attempt to sort out a life and find a place for himself. No quesiton, this is, so far, The Best Novel of 2002. It stands by itself.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Worst Books I Own
Review: Please don't waste your money on this book. It's terrible. I wish someone would have told me that before I wasted my money on this crap. If you're interested in dirtbags, at least read something good like Fante's father, or Bukowski, or Algren, or Selby, or better yet, buy a Velvet Underground or Stooges album. Or, hell, put a down payment on a bag of herion or head down to Sunset and sodomize a prostitute (male or female). I guarantee you it'll be more entertaining, even for $13. You can even shout, "I am officially a total scumbag!" Which is basically what Fante does on every page of this completely generic novel.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL!
Review: Read it months ago and still can't get it out of my mind. This guy is better than Bukowski. If you don't believe me give it a shot.
What's it about? Trying to stay off booze and whatnot long enough to create on the typer--while desperately needing to hold on to some dead-end job in order to keep a bit of food in the belly and a roof overhead. This is life, the way it is for most people in this great nation of ours. Not everyone out there is wealthy like Bill Gates and has it made. Most people in this country are struggling and merely trying to make ends meet.

Bruno Dante is one of us, one of many. He feels he has the ability and the talent to creat something he can be proud of as a writer...if he can keep the demons at bay long enough...
You don't have to be a writer to be able to relate.
A Great American Novel? That's exactly what I said.

Rating:
Summary: Bruno Dante's Way!
Review: The masterful Dan Fante, author of Spitting Off Tall Buildings, does it again. Easy to read, easy to relate. His protagonist Bruno Dante is a regular guy/struggling writer going from [bad] job to [bad] job in New York while at the same time hoping to create something worthwhile on the typewriter, etc., something he can be proud of... I like Fante as a human being, I like his "voice," and so will you. Unlike so many writers out there, he manages to stay clear of B.S. Life isn't easy for a lot of people; that's just the way things are and he lays it out. The style is pure, raw, from the heart and gut. The way it ought to be.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL!
Review: The title of this review pertains to Dan Fante the novelist, and to "Bruno Dante", Fante's protagonist in this third installment about an alcololic on a downward spiral. Dan Fante is a brilliant writer who takes the reader into the bowels of hell and back. How does he do it? "Bruno Dante" is a man on a road to nowhere and, like all alcoholics, refuses to admit it but somehow keeps on going. How does he do it?

"Bruno" started out as a chump (CHUMP CHANGE), then became a MOOCH and now he tries a geographical cure for his misery by moving to New York. In his first interview with a temp agency he lies about his last employer, telling the interviewer the company has relocated. "I've relocated, too" is his explanation for being in New York. Alcoholics are always trying to "relocate". Dead end job after dead end job follows until he finds himself hanging onto the side of a building, fourteen stories up, washing windows. The one satisfying moment of his day comes when he spits off a tall building knowing someone down below is lower than he. At least for that second.

Once again Fante explains the illness of addiction in a way everyone can understand. The booze and the drugs are only simptoms. It's the mind that's messed up. Yet "Bruno" will continue to seek happiness in a place where happiness never has been and never will be found: in that messed up mind of his.

You'll find yourself pulling for "Bruno" to find that happiness because, even though he's a full blown alcoholic, Fante has made him a very funny and likeable guy. Will he find that happiness we all seek? Read the book to find out.

Rating:
Summary: How Does This Guy Do It?
Review: The title of this review pertains to Dan Fante the novelist, and to "Bruno Dante", Fante's protagonist in this third installment about an alcololic on a downward spiral. Dan Fante is a brilliant writer who takes the reader into the bowels of hell and back. How does he do it? "Bruno Dante" is a man on a road to nowhere and, like all alcoholics, refuses to admit it but somehow keeps on going. How does he do it?

"Bruno" started out as a chump (CHUMP CHANGE), then became a MOOCH and now he tries a geographical cure for his misery by moving to New York. In his first interview with a temp agency he lies about his last employer, telling the interviewer the company has relocated. "I've relocated, too" is his explanation for being in New York. Alcoholics are always trying to "relocate". Dead end job after dead end job follows until he finds himself hanging onto the side of a building, fourteen stories up, washing windows. The one satisfying moment of his day comes when he spits off a tall building knowing someone down below is lower than he. At least for that second.

Once again Fante explains the illness of addiction in a way everyone can understand. The booze and the drugs are only simptoms. It's the mind that's messed up. Yet "Bruno" will continue to seek happiness in a place where happiness never has been and never will be found: in that messed up mind of his.

You'll find yourself pulling for "Bruno" to find that happiness because, even though he's a full blown alcoholic, Fante has made him a very funny and likeable guy. Will he find that happiness we all seek? Read the book to find out.

Rating:
Summary: From a temp agency to Oz
Review: There might be one or two disgustingly rich writers on this planet, possibly made rich and famous by an unfair publishing market that favours writers à la Stephen King, rather than gut clenching, mind blowing novels. No, definitely, not all the writers have enough money to support their artistic career. There were honourable examples in all historical periods and in all kind of literature: Dickens worked in a shoe polish factory, Cendars practically toured the world doing in his life the most disparate jobs, from piano player to whale hunter; Strindberg was for a period a librarian, Mallarmé a teacher, Breton a proof-reader, Hawthorne a customs officer and Melville a sailor. And if Jack London went to Klondike to look for gold, writer wanna-be Bruno Dante, a creation of novelist, poet and dramatist Dan Fante, goes to New York to look for a job.
Spitting Off Tall Buildings might be considered as another chapter of Dan Fante's Bruno Dante saga, a saga started with his first novel Chump Change. This time we follow Fante's main character in his pilgrimage from one job agency to another, temping and begging for some horrible job, carrying on a pointless life that will only encourage Bruno to drink more and write less. Staple-puller, theatre usher, night manager in a hotel or window cleaner (the one and only job which will give him an instant satisfaction, that of spitting off skyscrapers and other assorted buildings), Bruno seems to be lost in a maze of temp agencies and in an unfamiliar territory, till he gets what it looks like the perfect job, driving a cab. Unfortunately for him, even this last experience reveals as having its disastrous sides, such as getting mugged, a great excuse that will allow him to pretend of having VSD, Victim Stress Disorder. So, will Bruno find Oz at the end of that yellow brick road he's walking on? To know it, you've got to read the book yourself. The only side effect of the novel is that when it's over, you'll ask for more of this compelling stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Down on Luck!
Review: Yes, this is the one i really enjoyed. It felt like reading the work of the writer who didn't sweath while writting it (unlike Mooch). And that relaxed manner, communicates to the reader, as well. He did it in style, the way his father did, made ordinary events, into extraordinary. And that is something called ART?