Selected Stories of Andre Dubus

I just finished reading Dubus's Selected Stories for the fourth time. I've also read his other books, and I'm glad to report that Dubus is one of the few writers whose work can be read again and again with increased pleasure, a rare enough thing. So many kinds of stories are packed into this volume -- short stories and novellas, deep character studies ("A Father's Story"), topical stories ("The Fat Girl"), "high concept" stories ("Killings"), stories with a deep knowledge of the intersections among family, sex, and faith ("Voices from the Moon"), stories that understand compassion and forgiveness ("Rose"), and stories that explore love in the midst of reckless violence ("The Pretty Girl") Although many of these stories are thrilling enough, plot-wise, to keep you reading, it's the deep knowledge of the motivations, the pecadillos, the generosities, the anger, the unease, the longings, and most of all the love we are all capable of holding in our hearts, all at once, that makes these stories so worthwhile. Andre Dubus does not shy away from the dark places, and he writes his characters with such empathy that we are willing to go there with them, with him. Selected Stories is an important book, and a book well worth a patient first read. I think it is a book that will stand the test of time. If there is any justice in the world, it will be read a hundred years from now, a necessary bit of news about what it was like to live in the twentieth century, no less indispensible than Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald, and ten times as wise.

I was 17 and a senior in high school when I came across an article in the paper about a series of benefit readings that were being held to raise money to pay for the medical bills for Andre Dubus. I called a number and got a schedule, and then agonized over which Saturday reading I would attend - should I go to hear Kurt Vonnegut and E.L. Doctorow or John Irving and Stephen King? I ended up choosing the latter (mainly because I had a crush on John Irving!)In the weeks leading up to the reading, I thought it might be a good idea to find out more about this Andre Dubus, so I went to the bookstore and bought Adultery and Other Choices. I was astonished. I immediately borrowed every Andre Dubus book that was available at the library and devoured every word. I'm a New Englander and was raised in the Catholic church, and I related to Mr. Dubus' stories.At the reading that Saturday, I had the honor of meeting Mr. Dubus. He was in a hospital bed, and was obviously still suffering from the accident, but he was smiling and seemed to be a little surprised at the size of the crowd. He was gracious when I thanked him for his stories. It makes me sad that there will be no new Andre Dubus stories, but I am so grateful for the ones he gave us while he was here, all too briefly.

I return to Andre Dubus whenever I get hungry for a really good short story. However, after recently experiencing a Matt Fowler's revenge in the movie, "In the Bedroom," I revisited this 1996 collection of short stories. That movie is based on one of the twenty-three, stunning stories collected here, "Killings." Novelist Barbara Kingsolver has said that "a good short story cannot simply be Lit Lite." Rather, "it is the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces." Confronting issues including a bereaved father's revenge ("Killings"), abortion ("Miranda over the Valley"), difficult relationships ("Adultery," "The Winter Father," "Voices from the Moon," "The Pretty Girl," "The Pitcher," "Leslie in California"), religion ("If They Knew Yvonne"), obesity ("The Fat Girl"), fatherhood ("A Father's Story"), rape ("The Curse"), sexuality and death, Dubus triumphs in delivering profound truths in these "tight spaces." You won't find happily-ever-after endings here. Rather, these are emotionally compelling stories that feel too real to be fiction. And they will leave you coming back for more. G. Merritt

Dubus sets his tales along the Massachussets/New Hampshire border and seems to have turned it into his own Yoknapatawpha County. But what is really distinctive is the spiritual territory that he has carved out with these stories of decent men trying to be true to Catholic beliefs in the face of difficult circumstances. The men at the center of the stories are entrepreneurs, as opposed to professionals or workmen. They are brawny brawling types, fond of beer and cigarettes and women, love their wives (even ex-wives) and children deeply and they are immersed in the rituals of Catholicism. Here is the father of A Father's Story: I go to bed early and sleep well and wake at four forty-five, for an hour of silence. I never want to get out of bed then, and every morning I know I can sleep for another four hours, and still not fail at any of my duties. But I get up, so have come to believe my life can be seen in miniature in that struggle in the dark of morning. While making the bed and boiling water for coffee, I talk to God: I offer Him my day, every act of my body and spirit, my thoughts and moods, as a prayer of thanksgiving, and for Gloria and my children and my friends and two women I made love with after Gloria left. This morning offertory is a habit from my boyhood in a Catholic school; or then it was a habit, but as I kept it and grew older it became a ritual. Then I say the Lord's Prayer, trying not to recite it, and one morning it occurred to me that a prayer, whether recited or said with concentration, is always an act of faith. Most of the characters in the stories are similar--while recognizing their own limitations, they are making the effort to be good Christians, or, at the least, good people. In this story, the Father has reached a point in his life where he feels that he has achieved some sense of inner peace. But this peace is destroyed when his daughter comes to him for help and he embarks on a course that, while he feels it is justified, he knows is wrong. In Voices from the Moon, the father falls in love with his son's ex-wife and over the course of the novel must confront both of his sons, his daughter and his ex-wife with this revelation. The recurring image in the story is that of communion. Each character has certain rituals, involving Mass or alcohol or cigarettes or food, wherein they seek an inner solitude in which they can be at peace. The father, in particular, is no longer a practicing Catholic, but he has built his home into a virtual monastery, with a deck, surrounded by woods, where he goes at night to think and dream. For him, the most troubling aspect of his predicament is the self-knowledge that he has transgressed the rules that make it possible for family members to trust one another and that, therefore, he could lose his son. The stories are a real pleasure to read; it is all too rare in modern fiction to find writing that is so explicitly morally f

Forget the minimalist wastelands created by Ray Carver. The real genius working in the past quarter-century (and getting much, much less acclaim) was Andre Dubus. Shunning the hard-edged weariness of his contemporaries, Dubus filled his stories with life and faith and passion. This collection is a fine introduction to his writings and contains one of my all-time favorites with "Voices From the Moon." All the stories are accessible and as emotionally compelling as anything you'll read. There aren't words enough to praise.