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 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Pleased with his progress on his novel about Vera, Arturo goes to find Camilla at the Columbia Buffet. He notices a change in her and wonders if she is missing Sammy. He tells her to come see him sometime. A few days later, Camilla appears at his room with a “swollen lower lip” and a “purple and black smudge” around her eye (130). When he asks her who hit her, she claims it happened in an automobile accident. When he asks, “Was Sammy driving the other car?” (130), she begins to cry and tells him that she drove out to see Sammy in the desert after work. He punched her in the face twice for waking him up at three in the morning (130). She takes out a bottle of whiskey from her purse, and they both drink until they are very drunk. Arturo professes his love for her, and they finally sleep together.
Some time after that night, Arturo and Camilla go to Terminal Island together and spend the day on the beach. She is in a bad mood and has been drinking too much. When Arturo goes to join a group of Japanese children playing football, Camilla drives off without him, and he takes the bus back to Los Angeles. Arturo continues to see Camilla, even though he knows she is drinking too much andbecoming increasingly instable. One day, he gets home and finds the door to his room locked. He tells her to let him in and thinks she must be very drunk. She tells him if he opens the closet door she will “scream and scream” (135). She breaks down and begs him to go with her to find Sammy in the desert, as she knows that he won’t see her alone. Arturo finally agrees to go with Camilla to see Sammy. When they knock on the door, Sammy calls out, “If that’s you, you little Spick, I’ll kick your goddamn teeth out” (136). When Sammy sees Arturo, he tells him that he can come in, but that he does not want to see Camilla. Sammy asks Arturo to look at another of his stories; Arturo agrees, but asks him to let Camilla come in since it is cold out. Sammy relents and yells at Camilla to get inside. He orders her to build a fire and make breakfast while he and Arturo talk about writing.
Arturo eventually goes to sleep in Sammy’s hammock while Camilla does the laundry. A few hours later, she wakes him up, so they can drive back to Los Angeles. When he gets back to his room, Arturo opens his closet door and realizes that Camilla had been smoking marijuana in it. That night, he waits in her car and confronts her about the marijuana. He tries to get her to quit, but he knows he does not have that power over her. She drives him to a night club called the Club Cuba. Inside, everyone is smoking marijuana. A man hands her a tobacco can in exchange for two dollars. Afterwards, they drive to her apartment, which is filthy. She asks him if he has ever tried marijuana and promises him that one time won’t hurt him. They get high together before having sex. Afterwards, Arturo is consumed with guilt and sadness over the state of Camilla’s life. He leaves her apartment late at night thinking that he would “never see Camilla Lopez again” (144).
Chapter 17 Summary
Arturo finishes his novel and sends it off for review. After mailing it to Hackmuth, he goes to mass and “[prays] for a miracle” (145). A few days later, he receives a telegram from Hackmuth that states: “your book accepted mailing contract today” (145). Arturo is elated. Soon after, he receives the contract and a check for five hundred dollars. Although he has not seen Camilla in three weeks, he resolves to go find her to tell her the good news. At the Columbia Buffet, he learns that Camilla has not showed up for work in two weeks. He goes to her apartment and finds her living in filth. He realizes that she has not been eating and goes to the store to buy her food. After she eats, she vomits, and Arturo goes out to buy her a clean nightdress. When he returns, the door is locked, and he knows she must be smoking marijuana. He tries to get the landlady to open the door, but she is suspicious of him. Camilla calls out that she does not want Arturo around and the neighbors drive him out of the building.
After two days, Arturo goes back to Camilla’s apartment to find her gone. The landlady tells him that Camilla was “crazy” and that she had called the police (149). The night after Arturo’s visit, “Camilla had gone wild, throwing dishes, dumping furniture out the window, screaming and kicking the walls, slashing the curtains with a knife” (149). The police broke down the door and took her away. After Arturo pays the landlady for the damage that Camilla caused to the apartment, she tells him that Camilla is now in the county hospital. He goes to try to see her but is told that she cannot have any visitors until the next visiting day. However, when Arturo returns four days later, on visiting day, he learns that she has been transferred to another hospital. When he asks where she has been taken, the doctors and nurses tell him that they cannot give him that information.
The next day, he calls the County Institute for the Insane in Del Maria and asks to speak to the doctor in charge. He pretends to be a Dr. Jones from the County Hospital in Los Angeles and asks for a report on Camilla Lopez. Danielson replies that she is still under observation, and Arturo hangs up the phone, having now ascertained Camilla’s whereabouts.
In late October, the proofs of Arturo’s book arrive, and he buys a car. He spends his nights driving around the Los Angeles area and remembering past times with Camilla. One night, in November, he goes into the Columbia Buffet. The bartender recognizes Arturo and shows him a recent newspaper clipping that says that local police are “on the lookout” for Camilla Lopez, who has recently escaped from the Del Maria institution (153). Arturo immediately goes back to his room and hopes that Camilla will come there. After a few days, however, he realizes that she must have gone back to Sammy, “her true love” (153). Soon after, he begins to get telegrams from her requesting that he wire her money under the name “Rita.” He asks her to come south and meet him, but she responds that she would rather stay north. Although he tells himself that he will not continue to send her money, Arturo complies with all her requests for funds.
Chapter 18 Summary
Three nights later, Arturo gets home to discover that his door is locked from the inside. He goes in through the window and discovers that Camilla is smoking marijuana in the closet. He decides that he does not want to catch her “red-handed” and resolves to come back later (155). When he returns, she is lying on the bed. Arturo is filled with an urge to care for her and promises to buy them a house in Laguna Beach, where he can write and she can rest. He comforts her by describing their life together by the sea and promises to buy her a dog. Camilla is restless all night and gets up to smoke marijuana while she believes Arturo to be asleep. The next day, they drive toward Laguna Beach. They stop at a dog farm, and Arturo buys Camilla a dog, Willie.
In Laguna Beach, they look at houses, and Arturo chooses a place to rent that he believes to be perfect for them. When he comes downstairs, he sees that Camilla has gone for a walk with Willie. He goes through her purse and dumps out the cans of marijuana into trash. After Camilla returns from the walk, he leaves her with some money for food and other necessities so that he can return to Los Angeles to check out of the hotel. When he gets back late that night to the house in Laguna Beach, Camilla has left with the dog. Since the rent has already been paid for one month, he decides to stay on in Laguna Beach but soon realizes that he cannot bear to be there without Camilla.
Chapter 19 Summary
A week after going to Laguna Beach, Arturo’s book is published. Eventually, he receives a telegram from Sammy telling him that “that Mexican girl” is there and that Arturo should come get her (162). When he reaches Sammy’s place, Sammy tells him that Camilla left three days before. He kicked her out, and she walked out into the desert with only Willie and a bottle of milk for the dog (163). Arturo forces Sammy to show him where he last saw Camilla and goes out in search of her. He finally accepts that he will never be able to find her as she could have walked in any direction in the desert. He goes back to his car, which is parked at Sammy’s place. He takes out his copy of his book and writes, “To Camilla, with love, Arturo” (164). He throws the book out into the desert in the direction she walked and then drives back to Los Angeles.
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
The final chapters of the novel trace Camilla’s decline as a result of her unhealthy passion for Sammy, who despises and abuses her. When Camilla and Arturo drive to visit Sammy in the desert, it becomes clear that Sammy’s racist and misogynistic beliefs about Mexican women result in him treating Camilla like a slave. He commands her to cook, clean, and do laundry for him while he and Arturo discuss the publishing industry and the financial side of writing. The constant rejections from Sammy and the knowledge that he is soon going to die lead Camilla to spend more time with Arturo but also to become more reliant on alcohol and marijuana. She also becomes more violent and finally has a nervous breakdown that leads to her incarceration in state mental hospitals. Despite Arturo’s attempts to care for her after her escape from the asylum, she returns to Sammy’s place in the desert, where he once again rejects her and turns her out into the desert.
While Camilla descends into insanity and instability, Arturo begins to show signs of development and maturity in the novel’s final chapters. As Camilla becomes increasingly unwell, Arturo reveals his genuine love and concern for her by doing his best to care for her. He tries to stop her marijuana habit on several occasions, feeds and nurses her in her apartment, searches tirelessly for her in the state hospitals and asylums after she is taken away, and continues to wire her money after her escape from the asylum because he cannot bear the thought of her suffering. Above all, he tries to offer her a home in which she can recover by suggesting that they rent a place in Laguna Beach. However, Arturo’s fantasies about their domestic life in Laguna Beach reveal as much about his own longing for a sense of home as they do about his desire to comfort Camilla. As someone who has always felt homeless in Los Angeles and American society more generally, he is attracted to the idea of having a physical home (as opposed to the transient space of the hotel room) in which he can work, Camilla can rest and care for Willie, and they can both comfort each other apart from the chaos and corruption of the city. In the end, however, Camilla is too far gone for Arturo’s plan to work, and the house in Laguna Beach becomes just another fantasy of home.
By the end of the novel, Arturo has come a long way from when he first arrived in Los Angeles. He is no longer a poor, struggling writer; he has published a novel, in addition to his short stories, and achieved a degree of financial success. He has also gained experience with women through his connections with both Vera and Camilla. The novel underlines the way in which these relationships are connected to Arturo’s success as a writer. For instance, Arturo’s first novel tells the story of Vera Rivken; he is therefore indebted to her for his first major success as an author. Furthermore, it is clear that Camilla is also a major source of inspiration for the novel, as Arturo’s desire for her fueled his interest in writing and his interest in pursuing Vera. When Arturo throws a copy of the novel inscribed to Camilla, the gesture can be read as a tribute to his enduring love for her, and the degree to which she has inspired and influenced his writing. It also shows Arturo rejecting his material success as an author as a way of acknowledging the loss of Camilla.
