I discovered John Fante by chance, in the early nineties, wandering among the shelves of a bookshop. He had struck me with the title, “La confraternita del Chianti” (Marcos y Marcos’ edition had forced the title by using “Chianti” instead of “uva”). Curious about this writer of Abruzzo origins born in Denver, Colorado, I opened the novel and read the first page. I liked the writing and took the book home. I started reading, and after thirty pages I called the bookstore: “Please, find me everything you can by John Fante.” From his writing I felt that he would never disappoint me, the trust in his literary molecule was without reservations, and I was not wrong.
But let’s talk a little about this novel, now published by Einaudi with the title “The brotherhood of grapes”. We can almost say that it is Fante’s most important, although it is never right to say such a thing: the work of a great writer must be taken as a whole, each novel or story is a fragment of his journey. But we can certainly say that it is a mature novel, published in 1977, when Fante was 68 years old. A simple but profound story, which through the events of the characters is capable of staging universal human aspects, what great literature has always done. Its translator, a great expert on American culture, Francesco Durante, who unfortunately passed away prematurely a few years ago, defined it as “the most beautiful novel of the twentieth century on the father-son relationship”, and I must say that I agree with him, giving the same primacy , in the nineteenth century, to Dostoevsky with “The Brothers Karamazov”. It is no coincidence that, precisely in the “Brotherhood”, Fante tells us about his youthful encounter with the Russian writer using memorable words, “(…) I understood that I would never be the same again. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. He knew more he of fathers and sons of any man in the world (…)”.
The “Brotherhood” is an ironic novel, at times bitter, even sentimental, moving, very funny, and the writing flows lightly, pushing us to turn the page (another gift from adults). Fante tells us complex feelings with sincerity, staging situations so real that they seem stolen from autobiography, and this too is the prerogative of great writers, who especially when they write in the first person make us think that the story they are telling is real life. But the truth, in literature, is “only” the clay with which stories are shaped, which therefore, even if “invented”, have the strength of truth and are indeed true, but in another way. In short, a great novel, a great writer… more appreciated in Italy and in Europe in general than in America. Old same story.
