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.”

Gay Talese created something of a literary-political stir a few years ago when he asked, on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, “‘Where Are the Italian-American Novelists?’” Talese spoke, perhaps with an aim towards provocation, of “we reluctant Italian-American writers,” of “the reticence of our forebears,” of the Italian-American “legacy of laying low.” Of course Talese was speaking personally, about his own attempt, early in his career, to translate his immigrant father's story into a...