John Fante
Chiedi Alla Polvere

THE REVIEW

I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind

Camilla Lopez has been taken away by the dust.
She was enveloped by the dust of the east and the middle west of the Santa Ana desert, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, "city where dreams come true." Here, shortly after the Great Depression, desperate solitudes in search of opportunity, existences made of waiting and illusions, people of various ethnicities and social backgrounds crowd under a scorching sky. A hot, dusty, vulgar, notorious, racist city, a tangle of dilapidated establishments and sad districts.

Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress, under the burden of her condition of marginalization and discrimination, desperately tries to partake in the frantic and hectic search for peace and illusory happiness. But the dust is relentless and covers everything, even dreams.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind

Camilla is part of that type of people convinced that their happiness is elsewhere, in a distant and unreachable dimension; she is convinced that it requires renouncing her own specificity to be worthy of being part of another community, one foreign to her own, the only possibility of social redemption and personal fulfillment.
So much love is lost this way. Too much fear compels fleeing from oneself.

Arturo Bandini, who would do anything for her, is a helpless witness to Camilla's self-destruction. Overwhelmed by passion, the kind that overturns existence, that enslaves and condemns, that torments and consumes, that gives life a sense and at the same time disrupts it, he cannot save Camilla from herself.
And so he questions the dust, which, unchallenged, dominates, indifferent to the failure of a faded dream of happiness.

Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind, All