A saga de Arturo Bandini

Hoje semi-acordado no ônibus pensava sobre os livros mágicos, aqueles que sempre despertarão uma emoção quando são relembrados. Entre estes livros acho que toda a saga de Arturo Bandini escrita por John Fante entra nesta categoria, em especial Ask The Dust e The Road to Los Angeles. O que é mais notável e que cada capítulo é tão cheio de vida que nos transporta para as emoções que representa. Uma escrita tão simples e tão poderosa.
A edição americana que eu tenho de Ask the Dust é uma original da Black Sparrow Press, com o prefácio de Charles Bukowski:

."Then one day I pulled a book down and opened it, and there it was. I stood for a moment, reading. Then like a man who had found gold in the city dump, I carried the book to a table. The lines rolled easily across the page, there was a flow. Each line had its own energy and was followed by another like it. The very substance of each line gave the page a form, a feeling of something carved into it. And here, at last, was a man who was not afraid of emotion. The humour and the pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity. The beginning of that book was a wild and enormous miracle to me."

"Yes, Fante had a mighty effect upon me. Not long after reading these books I began living with a woman. She was a worse drunk than I was and we had some violent arguments, and often I would scream at her, `Don't call me a son of a bitch! I am Bandini, Arturo Bandini!'

Tenho que agradecer ao Bukowski; tanto pela sua literatura quanto pelos autores mágicos que ele me apresentou, entre eles Knut Hamsun e Louis-Ferdinand Celine.