Adultery and Other Choices

Time and time again professors, critics, publishers, and even the common reader look to Raymond Carver as the master of the short story. This simply is not fact. True, Carver is great, but he merely skims the surface of human behavior. In this collection, Dubus's second, through Catholicism, father-son relationships, marriage, and working class New England, Dubus delivers to his readers the human with his/her warts and all. These stories are powerful as Dubus is able to make even the smallest moments sincere and heart wrenching. Stories that stand out in the collection are Contrition, An Afternoon With the Old Man, and The Bully. Read this collection. Notice Dubus's sentence variety and description. This is how one writes, and honestly, Carver could have taken a note from this master. All of Dubus's collections are amazing. Personally, I read them from earliest to his last, but anywhere is a good starting point.

This book contains "The Fat Girl": one of the finest short stories of the second-half of the 20th century. Raymond Carver included it when editing his book American Short Story Masterpieces, and it belongs on any serious short story reader's book shelf. It's one of the few times that Dubus is able to mold a seemingly ordinary premise into something powerful and transcendent. Most of the other stories here are hit and miss: sometimes they come together beautifully, other times they don't always gel; but the writing is always first rate. Dubus is a writer's writer and his prose is always full of interesting turns of phrase, intricately built sentences, and solidly crafted paragraphs. This, like all his collections, is a good read, and any fan of well written literary fiction should check this out.

Simplicity. I hate it, really. I like stuff that reads like poetry, with adjectives all over the place. Not Andre. It's simply not necessary when you write this well, when every word is chosen with deliberate care. These authors, those who can communicate more with what is not said than what is said, are rare and hard to come by, to be treasured. Being a fat-acceptance junkie, I primarily fell in love with the piece "The Fat Girl." Although I'm not exactly certain whether the intent of the story was to promote self-love, regardless you'd almost think the man was a fat girl, he describes the experience with such intimacy and understanding. Gut-wrenching emotion is produced by the most minimalistic writing I've ever encountered. For the most part, the other pieces weren't particularly memorable for me, but that's probably because I most related to The Fat Girl, and not because the rest lacked the talent displayed in that particular piece. Whoever you are, you'll find a character to relate to in this book.

When I read Dubus I am reminded of a statement I read by Dostoyevsky about the difficulty a writer has depicting ordinary people. Dubus nullifies that; I have never encountered another author who appears to so effortlessly capture the subtle and poignant shades of commonplace experience. There are passages, pages, entire sections of his stories which read like pure intuition. He has such a gift for depicting the silences, the unspoken nuances, the dark matrices between family and lovers, and the fatal and visceral inner movements on which relationships hang that when reading him I feel as if I have entered a black room, donned goggles, and suddenly see about me the numerous red beams hidden to the natural eye guarding the heart of the room. His insight is so astounding that it would be easy to overlook his taut architectonics and lean and wiry prose.For those who have not read him, Dubus' stories tend to follow the same D-A-B-C-E line. That is, he will introduce the character, summarize the position they are in, and then build up their history to what is often a very powerful conclusion. He also tends to use little dialogue; instead, he often takes the position of an unseen observer. His style always suggest to me something painterly. Like Edith, the principal character of the title novella, we are drawn to fleshlessly insert ourselves, to mesh with those we are watching.This particular work is divided into three segments. The first dwells upon childhood and youth. An Afternoon With The Old Man, Contrition, and The Bully center around a young boy named Paul Clement and particularly his relationship with his father. Graduation is about a young woman's attempts to obliterate her high school reputation for being easy. The Fat Girl is what the title would suggest, an account of a girl's struggles with obesity and secret indulgence.The second half of the book is composed of military stories (Dubus was among other things a Marine Corps captain): Cadence, Corporal of Artillery, The Shooting, and Andromache. In Cadence we rejoin the character of Paul Clement as he enters the Marine Corps. The remaining three are primarily depictions of married life in the military, with Andromache (about a Navy widow) being the strongest of the trio.The book ends with the 50 page title novella, Adultery. Adultery introduces the character of Hank Allison, who Dubus makes use of throughout his works. But the story is primarily about his wife Edith and an affair she carries on with an ex-priest.From what I have read of his works to this point, the primary theme that Dubus seems to dwell on is that of the distances between people, father and son, husband and wife. His writing is powerful, honest, and unflinching, and I would trade one of his stories for a dozen 300 page novels published this year.