SOURCE: Kordich, Catherine J. John Fante: His Novels and Novellas. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000, 155 p.

In the following excerpt from her full-length study of Fante's fiction, Kordich offers a thematic and stylistic analysis of The Orgy and My Dog Stupid.

A final version of Colorado boyhood is given in The Orgy. Like 1933 Was a Bad Year, the novella was found among Fante's papers and then published with My Dog Stupid under the title West of Rome. His collected letters do not evidence Fante discussing the work outright and the existence of the story must have come as a surprise to his survivors. In a 1933 letter to his mother, however, Fante does mention memories that parallel the events in The Orgy including one trip he took with his father in the mountains outside Boulder where a friend had a gold mine (Letters, [Selected Letters] 42-43). As in The Orgy...