"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...