Charles Bukowski wrote the preface of Fante 's Ask the Dust in 1980 .
In the early 1980s , at the suggestion of novelist and poet Charles Bukowski ( who claims in his preface to Fante 's Ask the Dust that `` Fante was my god '' ) Black Sparrow Press began to republish the ( then out-of-print ) works of Fante , creating a resurgence in his popularity .
John Fante