Customer Reviews
Ask the Sons - By: MICHAEL ACUNA, 03 Jul 2006 
"Chump Change" is Bruno Dante's memoir of his life after being released from a "nut house"in the Bronx & his journey, both psychic & literal, home to Malibu to see his dying father, Jonathan Dante ("Ask the Dust"). "In this house, I was to experience what happens when a passionate artist gives up what he does & comes to detest himself."
Bruno is wounded. His soul & his heart ache for his father's love & acceptance but like Bruno Jonathan was also, for most of his life addicted to alcohol. Jonathan was either lostin a fog of alcohol,in a frenzy of writing...or both. Jonathan was unavailable to Bruno both physically & emotionally & Bruno becoming a writer only made this distance between the two more pronounced not less so. "Loving Jonathan Dante had not been an easy thing for anyone to do...I heard myself say, I Love You (to my father, Jonathan). Saying the words, what I felt was something like sorrow, but it was not sorrow, it was far deeper. It was the emptiness of a hole that would never be filled."
Fante has an uncanny ability to reduce a situation to its well-observed basics: "Seeing L.A. from the Air was more frightening than memory permitted. Real, vivid science fiction. It was just after sundown when we began to land. The natural light of day was gone replaced by billions of smog particles that gave the coming darkness the hue of bloodin a draining sink. This enormous, overfed, infected pig of a city rolled across the landscape as far as the eye could see, coughing, snorting & sucking up whatever was once natural & undisturbed."
Many passagesin "Chump Change" are laugh out loud funny though most are tragic for what we witness is Bruno's talent being smothered by layers of alcohol, drugs & fear: "I might have written books. He (Jonathan) had done it. Why hadn't I? It was because I had given up, had never had the courage to let myself fail. My father was dead & so was I. That was the sadness & the truth that wasin my soul."
"Chump Change" proves Bruno wrong: though sad & often depressing it stands as a testament to Bruno's remarkable & incontestable talent.
A breath of fresh air - By: , 29 Aug 2002 This is the kind of fresh, clear, honest writing that I adore. This guy writes with a brutal honesty & an economic style. This is the best contemporary read I've hadin ages. None of his peers come close. Of all the three Bruno Dante books, this is definitely the best. I highly recommend this book to any fan of straight talking & straight writing.
A Classic. - By: , 20 Feb 2000 I've only had this book for a couple of months, but I must have read it at least 5 or 6 times. I thought that this style of writing had been exhausted by Bukowski & numerous others - & done very badly by a lot of them.
But Dan Fante writes brillianty. As you follow Bruno Dante's alcohol & despair fuelled decline & eventual 'redemption', sentences & phrases will stayin your memory long after you put this book away.
I have read a lot of fiction, but I'd have to say that this book is one that'll I'll always come back to again & again.
