Fiction. John Fante recalls his first novel, recently republished by Black Sparrow Press: "Now that I am an old man I cannot look back upon WAIT UNTIL SPRING, BANDINI without losing its trail in the past. Sometimes, lying in bed at night, a phrase or a paragraph or a character from an early work will mesmerize me and in a half dream I will entwine it with phrases and draw from it a kind of melodious memory of an old bedroom in Colorado, or my mother, or my father, or my brothers and sister...of this I am sure: all of the people of my writing life, all of my characters are to be found in this early work. Nothing of myself is there any more, only the memory of old bedrooms, and the sound of my mother's slippers walking to the kitchen" (from the Preface). Other Fante works again available from Black Sparrow Press and SPD are ASK THE DUST and THE ROAD TO LOS ANGELES.