Ask The Dust

“Los Angles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, me feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.”

Throughout the novel, Arturo Bandini addresses the city of Los Angeles directly, often imagining it as a woman with whom he is in love. Arturo’s complicated relationship with Los Angeles is mirrored in his complicated relationship with Camilla Lopez, whom he also frequently addresses in such a manner and describes as a flower from the California desert. Significantly, the narrator uses the past tense “loved” in describing the city; over the course of the story, Arturo becomes increasingly disillusioned with Los Angeles and what it once represented to him.

“There’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf, Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett; not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume, through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!”

Arturo thinks this to himself while he is in the library and imagining the day when he will be a famous writer. He envisions his books as next to the books of Arnold Bennett, a respected British author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than another Arnold Bennett, Arturo hopes to be a great American writer. This quote is typical of Arturo’s tendency to daydream about a time when he has become a famous author. It also points toward his fascination with women and his hope that fame will allow him to win more female attention than he currently does.