“My Dear Bukowski,” “Hello John Fante”: Preface to Ask the Dust

This chapter reproduces two letters, first the one that John Fante sent to Charles Bukowski in January 1979 thanking him in advance for agreeing to write a preface to the forthcoming reissue of Ask the Dust by Black Sparrow Press, and then the one that Bukowski sent Fante in response the following month. The letters are followed by the original typescript of Bukowski’s now-famous Preface, which helped revive Fante’s novel after four decades in out-of-print oblivion.