DAN FANTE - CORKSUCKER (2005)

Blurb........

"A running commentary on the truth behind Los Angeles' gleaming façade - a life of brief encounters, desperation addiction and the chasm-sized distance between people - Corksucker digs into the dark landscape of the real America. In eight brutally-honest short stories Dan Fante takes the traditional cab driver 'knowledge' to a deeper place fuelled by raw emotion, wine guzzling existentialism and fleetingly hopeful poetic epiphanies. Here, the City of Angels' halo has definitely slipped..." Ben Myers

Eight short stories about a cab driver in Los Angeles. A bleak, grim existence; terminal drudgery interspersed by joyless sex, alcohol abuse and domestic discontent.
Not much to envy in this hack driver's American dream.

I've been interested in reading Fante, after some web-browsing threw up his name alongside the likes of father John, Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr.

Dan Fante - an authentic literary outlaw says The New York Times.

He has written a series of 4 books about an alcoholic writer cum alter-ego Bruno Dante, that I'm looking forward to reading;

1. Chump Change (1998)
2. Mooch (2000)
3. Spitting Off Tall Buildings (2001)
4. 86'd (2009)

On the whole; sad, amusing and entertaining and I'm looking forward to his full-length work.

4 from 5.

I borrowed this reading copy from Leighton Buzzard Library.
As a further aside, Corksucker was the title of the UK edition, Shortdog is the US equivalent.