I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.

Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve--it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.

Can we really be whoever we want to be, now that we’ve collected all that we are?

I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.

You have to find hope. Hope is such a shape shifter. You tend to look in the rearview mirror for hope, but when its gone, you have to look forward. You have to get in the van and keep driving on.