SOURCE: Sylvester, Harry. “Fiction.” Commonweal 32 (18 October 1940): 533-34.

In the following unfavorable review, Sylvester derides the stories comprising Dago Red as dull and inconsequential.

Mr. Fante has been likened to an Italian Saroyan, and the disservice of the comparison is all to Mr. Fante. He began to write at a time when there was a cult of the naïve prevalent in American letters, and while he has never been consciously naïve like Mr. Saroyan, he perhaps used the child's point of view in his stories a bit too much. This is noticeable in most of the early stories. It was a difficult task Mr. Fante set for himself, to use a child's psychology and phraseology, even, and yet to give his stories the subtlety of distinguished fiction. He failed more often than he succeeded, and his self-appointed task has not made for a good style.

One tires...