"Soaked in booze and sadness, psychotic eruptions and
hilarity."--Willy Vlautin
In the freewheeling, debaucherous tradition of Charles Bukowski, a taxi
driver's stories from the streets of lowlife Los Angeles--with an
introduction by Willy Vlautin. "Dan Fante is an authentic literary
outlaw."--New York Times.
Dan Fante lived the stories he wrote. His voice has the immediacy of a
stranger of the next barstool, of a friend who lives on the edge. As he
writes in Short Dog (the title is street slang for a half-pint of
alcohol):
I had been back working a cabbie gig as a result of my need for money.
And insanity.
Hack driver is the only occupation I know about with no boss, and
because I have always performed poorly at supervised employment, I
returned to the taxi business. The up side, now that I was working
again, was that my own boozing was under control and I was on beer only,
except for my days off.
Fante was the son of famed novelist and screenwriter John Fante, but as
the Los Angeles Times wrote, the younger Fante "... allows us a
glimpse of the Southern California demimonde that surely escaped his
father's attention."
These outsider stories are raw, vivid, and brutally honest. But even
when the stories are fueled by anger and disgust, they are punctuated by
unexpectedly funny and dark-humored vignettes.
Short Dog is for readers ready for a cab ride on the wild side.
