SOURCE: Weber, Donald. “‘Oh God, These Italians!’: Shame and Self-Hatred in the Early Fiction of John Fante.” In John Fante: A Critical Gathering, edited by Stephen Cooper and David Fine, pp. 65-76. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
In the following essay, Weber contends that Fante's early fiction “offers a rich testament to how the often disabling powers of shame and self-hatred can somehow inspire the literary imagination.”
