46 pages • 1 hour read
John FanteAsk The Dust
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1939A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
The next day, Arturo returns to Los Angeles in the aftermath of the earthquake. He begins to attend mass every morning, buys a new rosary, and tries to give up smoking. He writes letters to his mother asking for money and telling her about how devoutly he prays every morning. He continues to be filled with guilt until he resolves to write a story about Vera. After making this resolution, he decides to go see Camilla at the Columbia Buffet. He asks her if he can see her after work. When she tells him that she has another engagement, he continues to insist that she see him. He waits for her in the parking lot until she appears with Sammy the bartender. Arturo says, “You’re going with me, Mexican” and tries to pull her with him (107).Sammy leads Camilla away. Arturo checks the car certificate to find Camilla’s address and decides to follow her home. However, he changes his mind and returns to his room at the hotel.
Arturo works hard on his story about Vera Rivken, which gradually develops into a novel. Around the same time, his new short story, “The Long Lost Hills,”is published in the Atlantic Monthly. One night, his neighbor, Hellfrick, comes into his room and asks him if he would like “a big thick steak” (109). Arturo replies that he would and asks how they are going to get one without money. Hellfrick tells Arturo to come with him, and they drive out to a barn on the edge of the city. To Arturo’s horror, Hellfrick goes into the barn and kills a calf. He then tells Arturo he is going to give him “a lesson in butchering” and begins to cut up the cow (111). Arturo resolves to cut all ties with Hellfrick.
Chapter 14 Summary
Hackmuth informs Arturo that another magazine wants to publish “The Long Lost Hills”and sends him another check for a hundred dollars. Arturo feels as if he is beginning to make it as a writer and sends ten dollars home to his mother. One night, Camilla comes to his room. They begin to talk, and she asks him if he remembers Sammy. He replies that he does and asks her if she is in love with him. She evades the question and tells him that Sammy is dying of tuberculosis. His dying wish is to have a short story published, and she wants Arturo to read over his manuscripts and help him get published. Arturo looks over Sammy’s work and tells her it is “hogwash” (116), but she begs him to help him since he is going to die within the year. He eventually agrees to do it for Camilla’s sake. After she leaves, Arturo makes notes on Sammy’s stories and writes him a withering letter about his lack of talent as a writer. He then mails the manuscripts and his letter back to Sammy.
Chapter 15 Summary
Arturo does not see Camilla again for a week, during which time he receives a letter from Sammy thanking him for the corrections. In the letter, Sammy tells him that he does not know how to handle Camilla; he writes, “You don’t understand Mexican women. They don’t like to be treated like human beings. If you’re nice to them, they walk all over you” (121). A few nights after Arturo receives Sammy’s letter, Camilla enters his room. Her appearance is disheveled after a long evening at work. To hurt her, Arturo tells her that she looks like “a cheap imitation of an American” and that she is a “disgrace to her people” (122). Camilla retorts that she is just as much of an American as he is and that he is dark “like Eyetalians” (122). She sits on the bed and tries to get him to come over. He refuses, and she asks if he is scared. He denies it and tells her that he is busy writing. He finally lies down beside her; she tries to have sex with him, but he is not aroused. She tells him to let her go, but he refuses to release her and begins to get aroused. When she finally breaks free, she tells him that he’s “no good” and that she hates “rough stuff” (125). Arturo is not bothered by Camilla’s words because he feels as if he now knows that he “could possess her now if [he] wished” (124).
After that night, Arturo goes back to working on his book, certain that Camilla will eventually return. After a week or two, she comes to his room and throws pebbles at his windowpane from outside. They drive in her car to a shooting gallery. Camilla is embarrassed by the fact that Arturo cannot shoot a gun. After the shooting gallery, they get back in her car. Camilla is still angry and tells Arturo that she hates him. He tells her he will get out of the car and walk home. After letting him out, she tells him that she hopes he never makes it back and that “they find him dead in the gutter in the morning” (128). As he walks away, he hears her start to cry.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
Around the time that he is starting his novel, Arturo begins to have more success as a writer. His second short story, “The Long Lost Hills,” is reprinted in another magazine, earning him more money, and he is making good progress on his first book. This confidence in his writing gives him the confidence to begin pursuing Camilla again. His confidence in his skills as a writer also allow him to feel superior when Camilla shows him the work of his rival, Sammy. Although Arturo gradually realizes that Camilla is in love with Sammy, he knows himself to be far more talented as a writer and relieves his bitter feelings by writing a searing critique of Sammy’s work.
These chapters also give insight into the character of Sammy, who so far has only been described as the quiet bartender at the Columbia Buffet. Sammy’s response to Arturo’s corrections on his manuscripts reveals his true character. In his letter, Sammy tells Arturo that he is too gentle with Camilla and that Mexican women enjoy being treated in a sub-human fashion. Sammy’s racist, misogynistic comments seem to inspire Arturo to treat Camilla with even more cruelty and bigotry than usual when she comes into his room not long after he reads the letter. He calls her “a cheap imitation of an American” and makes fun of her for wearing the white high heels; “you ought to wear what your feet were meant to wear,” he remarks, “huaraches” (122). Once again, however, Arturo’s cruelty toward Camilla reflects his own insecurities about his identity as an Italian American; Camilla herself points this out when she declares that she is just as much of an American and describes him as “dark like Eyetalians” (122).
Arturo’s passion for Camilla often appears to be as much about his desire to possess her and prove his masculinity as it is about Camilla herself. For instance, he is more concerned with proving that he has the ability to have sex with her than actually sleeping with her, and he derisively calls her a “Mexican” whenever he feels powerless (such as when he is trying to get her to leave Sammy and come with him in Chapter 12). Similarly, Camilla’s insecurities about her identity also seem to affect her ability to have healthy relationships with Arturo or Sammy. The fact that she is so embarrassed by Arturo’s inability to perform well at the shooting range evokes the way in which he fails to conform to the image of the strong, aggressive, white American male that she sees in Sammy. Although Sammy mistreats Camilla, she is attracted to him perhaps in part because of her anxieties about belonging in American society. Arturo is a misfit, like her, and cannot offer her the same illusion of belonging.
