Broken Vessels (21 page)

1988/1989

A Biography of Andre Dubus

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered one of the greatest American short story writers of the twentieth century. His collections of short fiction, which include
Adultery & Other Choices
(1977),
The Times Are Never So Bad
(1983) and
The Last Worthless Evening
(1986), are notable for their spare prose and illuminative, albeit subtle, insights into the human heart. He is often compared to Anton Chekhov and revered as a “writer's writer.”

Born on August 11, 1936, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Dubus grew up the oldest child of a Cajun-Irish Catholic family in Lafayette. There, he attended the De La Salle Christian Brothers, a Catholic school that helped nurture a young Dubus's love of literature. He later enrolled at McNeese State College in Lake Charles, where he acquired his BA in English and journalism. Following his graduation in 1958, he spent six years in the United States Marine Corps as a lieutenant and captain—an experience that would inspire him to write his first and only novel,
The Lieutenant
(1967). During this time, he also married his first wife, Patricia, and started a family.

After concluding his military service in 1964, Dubus moved with his wife and their four children to Iowa City, where he was to earn his MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. While there, he studied under acclaimed novelist and short story writer Richard Yates, whose particular brand of realism would inform Dubus's work in the years to come. In 1966, Dubus relocated to New England, teaching English and creative writing at Bradford College in Bradford, Massachusetts, and beginning his own career as an author. Over an illustrious career, he wrote a total of six collections of short fiction, two collections of essays, one novel, and a stand-alone novella,
Voices from the Moon
(1984)—about a young boy who must come to terms with his faith in the wake of two family divorces—and was awarded the
Boston Globe
's first annual Lawrence L. Winship Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.

In the summer of 1986, tragedy struck when Dubus pulled over to help two disabled motorists on a highway between Boston and his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. As he exited his car, another vehicle swerved and hit him. The accident crushed both his legs and would confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Plagued by residual pain, he sunk into a depression that was further exacerbated by his divorce from his third wife, Peggy, and subsequent estrangement from their two young daughters, Cadence and Madeleine. Buoyed by his faith, he continued to write—in his final decade, he would pen two books of autobiographical essays,
Broken Vessels
(1991) and
Meditations from a Moveable Chair
(1998), and a final collection of short stories,
Dancing After Hours
(1996), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist—and even held a workshop for young writers at his home each week.

In 1999, Dubus died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two. He is survived by three ex-wives and his six children, among them the author Andre Dubus III. Since his death, two of Dubus's short works have been adapted for the screen: “Killings,” which was featured in
Finding a Girl in America
(1980), became the critically acclaimed film
In the Bedroom
(2001), starring Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei; and
We Don't Live Here Anymore
(2004), starring Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Peter Krause, and Naomi Watts, is based on Dubus's novella of the same name from his debut collection,
Separate Flights
(1975).

Dubus Sr., with a sixteen-month-old Andre in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Andre's sister Elizabeth is on the left and Kathryn is on the right. The family is bundled up for the Louisiana winter, which Kathryn remembers as being much colder during her childhood than it is now.

Dubus with classmates from his first- or second-grade class, around 1940. Dubus is second from the left, displaying what his father called his “ethereal face.”

The Dubus family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, around 1941. Andre Jr., stands in front, while his father, Andre Sr.; mother, Katherine; and sisters, Elizabeth and Kathryn, from left to right, stand in the back.

Dubus's freshman or sophomore school photo from Cathedral High School, around 1951. Dubus gave this photo to his recently married sister with a note on the back saying, jokingly, “To a good cook from the only one polite enough to eat her meals.”

A fifteen-year-old Dubus, seen here in 1952.

Dubus as a young Marine in Quantico, Virginia, where he received his training and became a commissioned officer in 1957.

Dubus around 1967, while he was working at Bradford College in Bradford, Massachusetts. This photo was taken by one of his students.

A photo of Dubus taken by a fellow student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City, around 1965. This photo was used as a dust jacket picture as well as in a newspaper story from Dubus's hometown announcing the publication of his first novel,
The Lieutenant
(1967).

Dubus in Iowa with his daughter Cadence in 1983. Cadence was born on June 11, 1982.