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BEWARE ESCAPISM

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.

—JOHN MILTON

fter the crushing disappointment of the unexpected failure of his
great novel Ask the Dust, John Fante needed an escape. He
would have loved to hit the road, to flee the town and the state that
had broken his heart, but he couldn’t. Fante was alternately too poor
and then too successful as a screenwriter to afford to leave
Hollywood. And soon after that, he was too married and had too
many kids to support.
Over the years he found many ways to numb the pain he felt. By
playing pinball for hours on end (his addiction was extreme enough
to be immortalized as a character in William Saroyan’s The Time of
Your Life). By drinking for hours on end in Hollywood bars, where
he kept company with F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner. By
spending so many hours on the course that he turned his ever-
patient wife, Joyce, into a golf widow.
It wasn’t restoration that Fante was chasing, nor was it leisure, it
was escape from real life.
In his own words, Fante pissed away decades golfing, reading,
and drinking, and by extension not writing novels. Because that felt
better than getting rejected again and again. Because it was easier