By Ben Meyers | Copyright 2003, 3 A.M. Magazine. All rights reserved.

He has lived a life that would kill most people -- acute alcoholism and drug use, poverty, divorce, suicide-attempts, therapy, yet has survived to pick up the pen and tell the tale. Dan Fante isn't some two-bit, woe-is-me tortured writer, this is the real deal. Having read his first novel Chump Change , originally published in France, I couldn't work out why he wasn't one of the most famous writers in America -- but then America has always had a way of shying away from the kind of home truths that Fante's work meets head-on. His words cut through the whole sorry façade, make you feel alive, make you want to smash up the room. His word tears each page a new arsehole.