Fante's searing, effortless style eschewed the refinement of Fitzgerald, the hubris of Hemingway and the panoramic vistas of Dos Passos. Instead he marshalled the raw materials of his own life - poverty, sex, paternal hatred, Catholic guilt, misplaced pride, hard drinking, labour, fighting, overarching literary ambition and the internecine hatred within immigrant communities in pre-war America - rendering the pain and comedy with such heartbreaking simplicity as to brook no hint of the literary zeitgeist. Dazed & Confused