"Soaked in booze and sadness, psychotic eruptions and hilarity."-Willy Vlautin
In the freewheeling, debaucherous tradition of Charles Bukowski, a taxi driver's stories from the streets of lowlife Los Angeles-with an introduction by Willy Vlautin. "Dan Fante is an authentic literary outlaw."-The New York Times.
Dan Fante lived the stories he wrote. His voice has the immediacy of a stranger of the next barstool, of a friend who lives on the edge. As he writes in Short Dog (the title is street slang for a half-pint of alcohol):
I had been back working a cabbie gig as a result of my need for money. And insanity.
Hack driver is the only occupation I know about with no boss, and because I have always performed poorly at supervised employment, I returned to the taxi business. The up side, now that I was working again, was that my own boozing was under control and I was on beer only, except for my days off.
Fante...