For the author of
House of Sand and Fog and other novels and story collections, see
Andre Dubus III.
|
|
This article may contain unsourced peacock terms that merely promote the subject without imparting verifiable information. Please remove or replace such wording, unless you can cite independent sources that support the characterization. |
Andre Dubus (August 11, 1936 - February 24, 1999) was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. He is recognized as one of the best American short-story writers in the 20th century.[1]
Biography
Andre Dubus was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the oldest child of a Cajun-Irish Catholic family. His surname is pronounced "Duh-BYOOSE", with the accent on the second syllable to rhyme with the noun "excuse." Dubus grew up in the Bayou country in Lafayette, Louisiana and was educated by the Christian Brothers, a Catholic parochial school that emphasized literature and writing. Dubus graduated from nearby McNeese State College in 1958 as a journalism and English major. Dubus then spent six years in the Marine Corps, eventually rising to the rank of captain. At this time he married his first wife and started a family. After leaving the Marine Corps, Dubus moved with his wife and four children to Iowa City, where he later graduated from the University of Iowa's Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA in creative writing, studying under Richard Yates. He loved the spareness of Hemingway, the perfect quandary which is Checkhov, and the luminous human mystery found in Cheever. He loved his children up close and his exwives from afar. He loved cigarettes and artichokes and lime gimlets. He loved honor, he enjoyed teaching, he savored finishing his five pages; he was made whole by running.
Dubus's life was scarred by tragedy. His sister was raped as a young woman, causing Dubus many years of paranoia over his loved ones' safety. Dubus carried personal firearms to protect himself and those around him, until the night in the late 1980s, when he almost shot a man in a drunken argument outside a bar in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Dubus experienced a personal tragedy late on the night of July 23, 1986, when he was seriously injured in a car accident. He was driving from Boston to his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts and he stopped to assist two disabled motorists—brother and sister Luis and Luz Santiago. As Dubus assisted the injured Luz to the side of the highway, an oncoming car swerved and hit them. Luis was killed instantly; Luz survived because Dubus had pushed her out of the way. Dubus himself was critically injured. As a result of the accident, both Dubus's legs were crushed. His left leg had to be amputated above the knee, and Dubus would eventually lose the use of his right leg. Dubus would spend three painful years undergoing a series of operations, and extensive physical therapy. Despite his efforts to walk with a prosthesis, chronic infections confined him to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Dubus continued to battle the physical pains imposed by his condition, and with clinical depression. The circumstances were terrible. It may be that the ability to feel anger is what kept them each alive, but the marriage foundered. Over the course of these struggles Dubus's third wife, a newly unemployed editor and young mother who had herself become seriously depressed, was also failing to write. She left him, taking with her their two young daughters, his "babies". Unable to run, to write, to sleep, without his "three girls" he was heartbroken.
To help Dubus with his mounting medical bills and wheelchair ramps for his new life, and contribute something he hoped to his children, Andre's friends and fellow writers, Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike held a special literary benefit. Dubus was extremely grateful, and his appreciation extended to holding workshops and reading sessions for aspiring writers. Despite these physical, psychological, and emotional difficulties, Dubus continued to write, producing two books of essays and a collection of short stories. He also conducted a weekly writers' workshop in his home, meeting with a group of young writers, a few of whom were former students and many of whom were teenage girls in a residential program for abused adolescents.
Dubus also found a deeper religious faith at this time. A practicing Catholic all his life, Dubus found that the loss of his mobility drew him closer to God, and renewed his Catholic faith at a deeper, personal level. Those who knew him admired the peace and acceptance he had achieved, as well as his ability to live his life without bitterness or self-pity.
Dubus spent his later years in Haverhill, until his death from a heart attack in 1999, at age 62. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, near where he lived, in Haverhill,Massachusetts. He married three times, and fathered six children. His son Andre Dubus III is also an author, whose most noteworthy book is the novel House of Sand and Fog (1999), a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel was later filmed.
Writing career
Although he did write one novel, The Lieutenant, in 1967, Dubus considered himself to be and is mainly known as a writer of short fiction. Throughout his career, he published most of his work in small but distinguished literary journals such as Ploughshares and Sewanee Review, yet as the decades rolled by his stories appeared in well paying slicks, such as The New Yorker. Andre remained loyal to a small publishing firm run by David R. Godine that published his first works. Indeed he married his editor, and it is noted in library author biographies that her effects deepened his work. She fought his ideal of perfectly expressed Checkhovian doom. Even in a short story or novella she felt a character could change, learn or somehow could wrest something out of his suffering. She called it redemption. She had something there, and she changed him just a bit and for the better. Eventually even Playboy was buying his serious fiction. They did for years, until some apparently unforgiveable faux pas came between him and celebrated fiction editor Alice K Turner. Without this well-paying market, even though his editor had left (he'd taken her with him) when larger book publishers approached him with more financially-rewarding deals, Dubus stayed with Godine. Only in the last few years of his life, when his medical bills became substantial, that Dubus switched publishers, moving to Alfred A. Knopf.
Dubus's literary career was extensive. His collections include: Separate Flights (1975), Adultery and Other Choices (1977), Finding a Girl in America (1980), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983), Voices from the Moon (1984), The Last Worthless Evening (1986), Selected Stories (1988), Broken Vessels (1991), Dancing After Hours (1996), and Meditations from a Movable Chair (1998). His writing awards include the PEN/Malamud, the Rea Award for the Short Story for excellence in short fiction, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. Several writing awards are named after Dubus. His papers are archived at McNeese State University and Xavier University in Louisiana.
Cinematic adaptations
After Dubus's death, his story "Killings" was adapted into Todd Field's In the Bedroom (2001) starring Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marissa Tomei . The film was nominated for five Academy Awards – Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role (Wilkinson), Actress in a Leading Role (Spacek), Actress in a Supporting Role (Tomei), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Published (Robert Festinger & Field).
The 2004 movie, We Don't Live Here Anymore is based upon two of Dubus' novellas, "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Adultery."
Bibliography
- The Lieutenant (novel, 1967)
- Separate Flights (stories, 1975)
- Adultery and Other Choices (stories, 1977)
- Finding a Girl in America (stories, 1980)
- The Times Are Never So Bad (stories, 1983)
- Voices from the Moon (novella, 1984)
- The Last Worthless Evening (stories, 1986)
- Selected Stories (stories, 1988)
- Broken Vessels (essays, 1991)
- Dancing After Hours (stories, 1996)
- Meditations from a Moveable Chair (essays, 1998)
- In the Bedroom (stories, 2001)
Reviews
Updike, John (4 February 1985). "Books: Ungreat Lives". The New Yorker 60 (51): 94–101. Review of Voices from the Moon.
References
External links
