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 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Arturo thinks back to the day when he first arrived at the Alta Loma Hotel. When the landlady, Mrs. Hargraves asked him if he had a job, he told her that he was a writer and showed her the magazine with “The Little Dog Laughed.”After he gave her an inscribed copy of the magazine, she asked if he was a Mexican and told him that they do not allow Mexicans or Jews in the hotel. He declared that he was an American. When he signed the registry as Arturo Bandini from Boulder, Colorado, Mrs. Hargraves insisted that Boulder was in Nebraska and refused to let him have a room until he changed it in the registry.
Arturo goes onto describe the various people living in the hotel and explains how he tried to get them all to read “The Little Dog Laughed.” He left copies of the magazine conspicuously all over the hotel, but the only person to read and admire it was a fourteen-year-old girl named Judy Palmer. One day, she knocked on his door and asked him if he was the author of “The Little Dog Laughed.” Arturo was so flattered by her admiration that he invited her into his room and gave her an autographed copy of the story. He then asked her to read her story aloud to him. She read to him until her mother finally arrived to take her away. By the next day, the girl and her mother had left the hotel.
Chapter 8 Summary
Arturo receives a letter from his editor, Hackmuth. To his surprise, Hackmuth writes that he decided to take Arturo’s latest very long letter, cut out “the salutation and ending,” and publish it as a short story called “The Long Lost Hills” (56). Enclosed with the letter is a check for $175. Arturo immediately pays Mrs. Hargraves “back rent and two months’ rent in advance” (57). He then tips her an extra five dollars and refuses to take it back when she tries to hand it back. After leaving the hotel, he goes to a store and buys new clothes and amenities for his room. After spending a great deal of money, Arturo suddenly feels disgusted with himself and his new fancy clothes and puts his old clothes back on again.
Chapter 9 Summary
That night, Arturo takes a taxi to the Columbia Buffet. He sits down at a table and rereads Hackmuth’s letter until Camilla comes over. She asks him if he is mad at her and shows him her new shoes, “new white pumps, with high heels” (60). He orders expensive drinks and cigars. He tries to give Camilla a large tip and hands her money to give to the band so that they will play his requests. Camilla tells him that he is acting differently and that she liked him “better the other way” (61). He calls her a “Little Mexican princess,” to which she responds, “I’m not a Mexican…I’m an American!” (61). She then goes and puts on her old shoes. When she returns, they apologize to each other, and he tells her that the other shoes were beautiful. She puts the white shoes back on and they make plans to meet at her car later that evening.
Later, Arturo gets in Camilla’s car and sees that the owner’s certificate is “made out to Camilla Lombard, not Camilla Lopez” (62). Camilla comes out of the restaurant with the bartender, Sammy, whom she drives home. After he gets out of the car, Arturo asks her who Sammy is; she replies that he is just a friend. He then asks her if she is married and why the car is registered under the name Lombard instead of Lopez. She explains that she sometimes uses that name “professionally” and asks Arturo if he ever wishes his name was “Johnson, or Williams, or something” (64). He tells her he does not, but she says that she knows that his name bothers him as well.
They drive to the beach. Camilla asks Arturo to teach her how to swim, and they both take off their clothes. After getting into the water, Arturo hears Camilla scream and disappear. He struggles to try to save her but begins to feel weak. Just as he is starting to panic, he sees Camilla standing up and laughing and realizes that she has played a trick on him. He picks her up and throws her into the water. Afterwards, they get out of the water and wrap themselves in blankets to warm up. Camilla tries to have sex with him, but Arturo does not feel any desire for her. Camilla is offended and thinks it is because he doesn’t like her. She drives him back to his hotel in Bunker Hill. During the drive back, Arturo tells Camilla that his hotel doesn’t allow Mexicans. At the hotel, Camilla asks Arturo to kiss her good night and bites his lip hard before driving away. Back in his room, Arturo is suddenly filled with desire for her.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Arturo’s descriptions of his early days in the Alta Loma Hotel and his reaction to learning that his letter to Hackmuth has been published as a short story comically draw attention to his immaturity and sense of self-importance, especially when it comes to his writing. He leaves copies of “The Little Dog Laughed” all over the hotel and acts as if he is already a famous author with Mrs. Hargraves. When he finally gains a fan in the fourteen-year-old Judy Palmer, he cannot stop fawning over her because he has finally found someone to admire his work and worship him as a writer; he even convinces her to read his story out loud to him so that he can better admire his own prose. Although the reader recognizes that Arturo’s response to Judy stems from his obsession with his own greatness as a writer, to Judy’s mother, Arturo’s behavior appears entirely inappropriate and predatory, and she instantly whisks her daughter away from the hotel.
Arturo’s behavior with money also reveals his immaturity. The fact that he spends all his money in such an extravagant manner immediately after receiving the check for “The Long Lost Hills” provides a reminder that Arturo longs to be rich and famous because of his impoverished childhood; he wants to have the money to command respect and attention from those who have treated him like a poor immigrant in the past. Nonetheless, his attempts to get recognition and make himself feel better by spending money fall flat; he becomes disgusted with himself after buying a new suit of clothes and lavish accessories, and Camilla is disgusted rather than impressed by the showy and condescending manner in which he spends money at the Columbia Buffet after receiving the check.
The interactions between Arturo and Camilla in Chapter 9 reveal that Camilla shares Arturo’s anxieties about ethnicity and identity. She indignantly responds that she is not a Mexican but an American when Arturo tries to call her a “Mexican princess,” and she reveals that she sometimes uses the name Camilla Lombard “professionally” out of a desire to conceal her Mexican origins and escape the marginalization that comes with being Hispanic in their society. The fact that she forces herself to wear the uncomfortable white heels instead of the huaraches implies that Arturo’s remarks have affected her and suggests that she wishes to disguise the heritage that the huaraches evoke.
Although Arturo denies to her that he is discontented with his own last name and does not wish that it is something more like “Johnson or Williams,” the reader knows that this is not true; in Chapter 6, Arturo admits that the fact that his name “ends in a soft vowel” is part of the reason he has faced prejudice from people with last names like “Smith and Parker and Jones” and feels insecure about his ability to belong in American society (46). Arturo also makes unkind comments to Camilla about her race and ethnicity whenever he is feeling most insecure about himself and, especially, his sexuality; for instance, after he finds himself unable to have sex with Camilla on the beach, he tells her that Mexicans are not allowed into his hotel, a remark, he says, that “sickened both of us” (69).
