Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "true"
Andre Dubus III and the Dream State Bonanza
Last Saturday I traveled to the 2014 Baltimore Book Fair with my poet and writer friend Fernando. I was lucky enough to see (and pose a question to) Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog, among other novels. Simply put, the guy was engaging, helpful, and, at least to my untrained eye, he looked like he was enjoying himself.
Andre had a rough life, though: single-mom family in Massachusetts, barely paying the bills, violent neighborhood thugs who severely injured his brother and sister. His dad, one of America's famous short story writers, abandoned them early on.
To cope, and to protect his loved ones, Andre became a boxer, an attacker of lowlife predators, vigilante-style; but writing slid into his life as a valve for pent-up feelings.
At age 55, at the fair, Andre was tall and imposing, though certainly friendly. His voice was commanding but not authoritative, and his appreciation for each member of the audience was clear. A good role model, in short, especially held against the surly, iconoclast writer stereotype ("pay attention, my pain is so important"). He was a person in tune with his emotions and with the emotions of others, which, I can see, certainly lends itself to writing.
He mentioned a soft spot for troubled young men, since he was angry and violent and young once (if only towards abusers and people who hurt the weak). The way he spoke, I got the impression he had gone through at least one support group program, or therapy, or both; this was a good impression.
Of his books, I have only read House of Sand and Fog, though hearing him speak made me want to read more. The book in question, according to Mr. Dubus, was darker than he would have liked, but the ending he wrote was "the only one that would have worked." Dubus writes in an open, unpretentious style, and his use of voice in House of Sand and Fog is striking. One protagonist is a middle-aged Iranian colonel, the other a twenty-something ex-coke addict from the East Coast. Both speak from the first person perspective, and both are full and flawed characters.
Dubus read from his newest book, Dirty Love, which apparently evolved from a "sexy predator story" of a serial killer to a middle-aged woman's search for love. This was one of his examples of the "mystery" of writing: you start out with a murderer, and end up attaching yourself to the quiet, uncertain virgin and her first boyfriend. (There are three other novellas in Dirty Love, and this is only one them.)
My question to Mr. Dubus was how he chose his details while writing; as he read from Dirty Love, for example, he mentioned his character feeling the beat of a nightclub's speakers under her fingernails (I'm paraphrasing and probably getting the words wrong).
First he asked if I was a writer. I awkwardly mumbled, "yeah," and he gave a tasteful mini-speech about his process. The big takeaway I got was that writing was like "a dream state," at least with the first draft, so he seemed to be pretty intuitive with his choices.
The very next question (from another writer in the audience) concerned his revision process, and Mr. Dubus said he reviewed every scene "200-300 times" to ask, "Is this true? Does this character feel this way? Does this action happen like this?" The word "truth" was nice, since it implied an internal consistency of a novel, a network of rules, of the writer's own creation, that she must abide by. I found myself thinking of my own scenes and asking, "Is this true? Does the psychologist feel this way after being kidnapped?"
All in all, the trip to Bmore was a worthy one, because of Fernando, who was a great companion, but also because of Mr. Dubus's lecture. His name, by the way, is pronounced duh-BYOOSE, which the book fair announcer unfortunately butchered. Still, she said it with more kindness and effort than the kids in his middle school who called him "Doobus."
Andre Dubus III, in the flesh
Andre had a rough life, though: single-mom family in Massachusetts, barely paying the bills, violent neighborhood thugs who severely injured his brother and sister. His dad, one of America's famous short story writers, abandoned them early on.
To cope, and to protect his loved ones, Andre became a boxer, an attacker of lowlife predators, vigilante-style; but writing slid into his life as a valve for pent-up feelings.
At age 55, at the fair, Andre was tall and imposing, though certainly friendly. His voice was commanding but not authoritative, and his appreciation for each member of the audience was clear. A good role model, in short, especially held against the surly, iconoclast writer stereotype ("pay attention, my pain is so important"). He was a person in tune with his emotions and with the emotions of others, which, I can see, certainly lends itself to writing.
He mentioned a soft spot for troubled young men, since he was angry and violent and young once (if only towards abusers and people who hurt the weak). The way he spoke, I got the impression he had gone through at least one support group program, or therapy, or both; this was a good impression.
Of his books, I have only read House of Sand and Fog, though hearing him speak made me want to read more. The book in question, according to Mr. Dubus, was darker than he would have liked, but the ending he wrote was "the only one that would have worked." Dubus writes in an open, unpretentious style, and his use of voice in House of Sand and Fog is striking. One protagonist is a middle-aged Iranian colonel, the other a twenty-something ex-coke addict from the East Coast. Both speak from the first person perspective, and both are full and flawed characters.
Dubus read from his newest book, Dirty Love, which apparently evolved from a "sexy predator story" of a serial killer to a middle-aged woman's search for love. This was one of his examples of the "mystery" of writing: you start out with a murderer, and end up attaching yourself to the quiet, uncertain virgin and her first boyfriend. (There are three other novellas in Dirty Love, and this is only one them.)
My question to Mr. Dubus was how he chose his details while writing; as he read from Dirty Love, for example, he mentioned his character feeling the beat of a nightclub's speakers under her fingernails (I'm paraphrasing and probably getting the words wrong).
First he asked if I was a writer. I awkwardly mumbled, "yeah," and he gave a tasteful mini-speech about his process. The big takeaway I got was that writing was like "a dream state," at least with the first draft, so he seemed to be pretty intuitive with his choices.
The very next question (from another writer in the audience) concerned his revision process, and Mr. Dubus said he reviewed every scene "200-300 times" to ask, "Is this true? Does this character feel this way? Does this action happen like this?" The word "truth" was nice, since it implied an internal consistency of a novel, a network of rules, of the writer's own creation, that she must abide by. I found myself thinking of my own scenes and asking, "Is this true? Does the psychologist feel this way after being kidnapped?"
All in all, the trip to Bmore was a worthy one, because of Fernando, who was a great companion, but also because of Mr. Dubus's lecture. His name, by the way, is pronounced duh-BYOOSE, which the book fair announcer unfortunately butchered. Still, she said it with more kindness and effort than the kids in his middle school who called him "Doobus."
Andre Dubus III, in the flesh
