Ask the Dust

infobox Book |
name = Ask the Dust
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author = John Fante
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country = United States
language = English
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genre = Novel
publisher = HarperCollins
release_date = 1939
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media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0-06-082255-4
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"Ask the Dust" is a 1939 novel by Italian-American author John Fante set in depression-era California. It is one of a series of novels based around the character Arturo Bandini. A struggling young Italian writer living in Los Angeles falls for a young, unstable Mexican waitress. The novel has been adapted into the film "Ask the Dust".

The American author Charles Bukowski cites John Fante's work as a significant influence on his own writing, in particular Fante's book 'Ask the Dust.' Bukowski wrote a foreword to this novel for the Black Sparrow Press edition. "Ask the Dust" draws similarities to Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel Hunger. Fante was a great admirer of Hamsun.

The title "Ask the Dust" derives from Knut Hamsun's novel Pan from 1894, in which Lt. Glahn tells the story about the "Girl in the tower": The other one he loved like a slave, like a crazed and like a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask the mysterious God of life; for no one knows such things. She gave him nothing, no nothing did she give him and yet he thanked her. She said: Give me your peace and your reason! And he was only sorry she did not ask for his life.