Ask the Dust, Fante. Yes. Another Dan Bern suggestion, and another well-written work. I deferred the Charles Bukowski introduction until I had finished the book, as so many introductions say too much about what follows. If an author wants to spill what’s going on in an introduction to his own work, that’s one thing, but nobody else ought to presume. Turns out Bukowski did a very good job of talking about why he loved Fante without saying anything damagingly revealing about the book itself. Both Fante and Ring Lardner write very well about—well, people—and that so frequently means that there’s an undertone (or sometimes fundamental tone) of despair that reminds me why I can’t read too much Theodore Sturgeon at a time. It also means, sometimes, that my attention span isn’t long enough, so I every so often long for something to happen, already. I will pretend this is the same thing a colleague of mine means when he says he prefers books with a "big idea". Y’know, like Zombies.