Conversations with Andre Dubus

Profile in Courage

130 Profile in Courage Susan Larson / 1991 Times-Picayune 28 July 1991. reprinted in Leap of the Heart: Andre Dubus Talking. ed. ross gresham. new orleans: Xavier review Press, 2003. 200–202. © the times-Picayune Publishing co. all rights reserved. used with permission of The Times-Picayune. Until five years ago, Andre Dubus spent his days in perfect writerly fashion —writing, teaching, caring for a growing family, and crafting wonderful short stories that showed how even the simplest everyday decision can be an act of faith. Now he spends his days in an unending personal demonstration that even the smallest real-life act can be an example of incredible courage. Dubus’s life was changed forever in 1986, when he stopped to help two motorists in distress and was struck by an oncoming car. The accident resulted in the loss of one leg above the knee and the use of the other, confining him to a wheelchair. A short time later, after the birth of his youngest daughter, his third marriage ended, partially due to the strain of his post-accident life. His consolation? He saved the life of one of the people he stopped to help. Dubus, fifty-four, is rebuilding his life with the help of his friends, fellow writers, and admiring readers. Shortly after the accident, writers Ann Beattie , E. L. Doctorow, Gail Godwin, John Irving, Stephen King, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Ann Phillips, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Yates gave readings, with the proceeds earmarked for Dubus’s considerable medical expenses. A MacArthur “genius” grant ($310,000 over five years) awarded in 1989 also has helped to provide financial relief. Along with fellow writer Frederick Busch, Dubus recently received the fourth annual PEN/Malamud Award, funded by a bequest of Bernard Malamud to the international writers’ organization. It says something about the company Dubus is keeping these days to note that previous winners of this award are John Updike, Saul Bellow, and George Garrett. susan larson / 1991 131 Selected Stories, a welcome collection of Dubus’s previous fiction, was published in 1989. This month marks the appearance of Dubus’s ninth book, Broken Vessels, his first collection of nonfiction, which, among other things, discusses the accident and its aftermath. Born in Lake Charles, Dubus grew up in Lafayette and was educated at the Cathedral School, McNeese State University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His family includes a number of well- known writers. His son, Andre Dubus III, recently published his first collection of short fiction; his sister, Elizabeth Nell Dubus, is a novelist; and his cousin, James Lee Burke, has written award-winning mysteries. Dubus may be a longtime resident of the Northeast, but traces of a Louisiana accent still wander through his speech. “I know,” he said of this trait during a phone interview from his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. “All I have to do is hear one or see a movie set in Louisiana and it comes right back.” Traces of that accent are present in his writing as well. In Broken Vessels, he writes about his days chasing baseballs for the Lafayette Brahman Bulls in the Evangeline League; his education at the hands of the Christian Brothers ; the Cajun heritage, embodied in silver spoons and forks make of spoons that once belonged to Marie Antoinette, that was his birthright. Then there is the French Catholicism that is the enduring legacy of his Louisiana upbringing. “I am a Catholic writer,” Dubus said, discussing a story in which a father’s love is compared to God’s, a story in which a father takes the blame for a daughter’s hit-and-run accident. “I always look for ‘What’s the ethical question here?’ I had to think about how I’d react to that situation and I had to think about how that character would react. That’s just the way it is. Men shouldn’t back off.” Dubus, a former Marine, doesn’t back off. After the accident, a friend told him it would take five years to recover. Dubus thought this sounded a little excessive at the time, but it has proven, some five years later, to be true. “I spent the winter of ’91 learning a new vocation,” he said, “and that is how to keep my spirits up. It used to be, if I got depressed, I ran or walked five miles. There’s nothing a good workout wouldn’t cure.” Now he works out in different ways. Much...