John Fante splashed vinegar into the eyes of the world. The vinegar was house-made, from his mama’s trusty cupboard. Mama’s cupboard contained a lot, an old-world apothecary glutted with cloves of garlic, deceit, shame, bones, crucifixes, oregano, thyme, rosary beads, dried insults. Fante swallowed Mama’s cupboard whole, and inherited deep red measures of his father’s bladdeerblown rage. The world was a stage set for Arturo Bandini to take his place. The role of a lifetime. Fante wouldn’t disappoint. He’d play Bandini like a sword thrust, like a jittery grenade. Desperation would become the pack of wild rabid dogs nipping at his heels—he’d outrace them, stay out in front, he would last, and in his gritty perseverance, the dirty greasy no-good name of Bandini would become golden and catered, marquee in its flashbulb pop. Fante could see it all, spread before him like a soft warm blanket in which the gravest of psychic wounds could be swaddled. He, third-class citizen and immigrant louse, he, John Fante, would beat the world into submission, and eternity would vouch for him.