Dreams from Bunker Hill.

Fante, John. Dreams from Bunker Hill. Santa Barbara : Black Sparrow Press, 1982. First Printing of the First Trade Edition. ISBN: 087685529X. A Fine copy with original acetate dust jacket. This is one of only 500 copies of the hardcover trade edition in a quarter black cloth and paper over boards binding. "Dreams from Bunker Hill" takes place in Los Angeles in the late 1930's where Fante's favorite protagonist Arturo Bandini is a struggling writer who is given a job as a Hollywood screenwriter. Bandini is living on Bunker Hill in downtown L.A. but a series of circumstances lands him in a couple of very lucrative screen-writing jobs in Hollywood — that's his shot at Chandler and company. The main task in these jobs is not to write a word — the $300 a week cheques arrive precisely because of that. His problem, much like Fante's, is that he still wants to be a writer. Alas, there is no money in that and complications ensue. Fante has been compared to Dostoevsky, Knut Hamsun, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe, Steinbeck, James Farrell, William Saroyan and Nathanael West.