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This is a charming book dictated by the blind (from diabetes) John Fante to his wife in the last year of his life. His hero, Arturo Bandini, makes his way to Los Angeles and, after a series of misadventures, winds up as a writer in Hollywood. A writer who has not contributed a word to any script. So Hollywood turned out to be a misadventure as well. The disgusted Bandini returns to his home in Boulder, Colorado, where he suddenly turns into the worst kind of Hollywood name-dropper. He returns to Los Angeles to try again.

Dreams from Bunker Hill is like the obverse of a Horatio Alger story. Yet there are moments that shine out, such as this one:

Then I remembered one of Edgington's axioms: "When stuck, hit the road." At Sunset I wheeled my car out of the parking lot and hit the streets. The city was like a tremendous park, from the foothills to the sea, beautiful in the night, the lamps glowing like white balloons, the streets wide and plentiful and moving off in all directions. It did not matter which way you went, the road always stretched ahead, and you found yourself in strange little towns and neighborhoods, and it was soothing and refreshing, but it did not bring any [script] story ideas.

Of course, in the intervening years, the streets of Los Angeles have become clogged with traffic. Still,on my best days, I feel the same way about L.A.