Conversations with Andre Dubus

“Into the Melody”: A Conversation with Andre Dubus

144 “Into the Melody”: A Conversation with Andre Dubus Olivia Carr Edenfield / 1993 Resources for American Literary Study 33 (2010): 219–75. reprinted with the permission of Resources for American Literary Study, © 2010 aMs Press, inc. all rights reserved. Edenfield: I’ll start with some general questions and then move through Selected Stories, story by story, if that’s all right. Dubus: There’ll be some I won’t remember specific things about. Edenfield: Thomas Kennedy [in his book on your stories] says that there is an existential Christian vision at the core of your fiction. Would you talk about that? Dubus: That’s hard for me to do because I never understood what that meant. [Laughs] That’s the truth. I said this year at some reading, “I never have known what Existentialism meant. Every time someone defined it, I didn’t understand it.” Jack [Herlihy, Dubus’s personal assistant] told me “Here’s a definition you can use: ‘The existentialist believes that he is doomed to choice.” I said, “What the hell did people ever think that they were doomed to?” So I guess that’s my answer to that. This was a revelation when I heard that from Jack. He said some people believed that they didn’t have any choices. That’s kind of weird. Edenfield: Your characters have a choice, but they don’t deny the existence of God. Dubus: That’s true. Edenfield: You said to Kennedy [in the 1987 interview, included in the Twayne’s Studies in Short Fiction], “If I cannot become the character in the olivia carr edenField / 1993 145 book that I am reading, I quickly lose interest” (92–93). In which of your characters do you most see yourself? Dubus: I have some autobiographical stories about my boyhood, but I’m not about my boyhood anymore. When I wrote the stories about a boy named Clement, I used actual events. I realized this year working on an essay that I have never known what it feels like to be anybody else. I know what it feels like to be a character in a book written by somebody else or a character I’m writing, but I’ll never know what it feels like to be another human being . Even though in my stories about my childhood my parents would actually say some of the things they did, they’re not in the stories. It’s my adult memory of my childhood perceptions of someone I’ve never really known. When I wrote the stories about my childhood, I no longer felt as I did as a child. So it’s a difficult question to answer. Peter Jackman is an adult quasiautobiographical character in that I made him into a divorced father and had him experience some of the things that I’ve experienced as a divorced father. But I took away from him two gifts that I have received: I took away his vocation, and I took away his spiritual life to see how he would struggle. Edenfield: So without his spiritual life, he struggles harder? Dubus: I think so, but I feel equally close to all characters I write about—or try to become close to them. Edenfield: Do you feel just as close to Polly [in “The Pretty Girl” (1983)] as you do to Raymond [in “The Pretty Girl” (1983)]? Dubus: Oh, yeah, sure. It just depends on the point of view I’m in—which is like life, isn’t it? Have you ever listened to ex-spouses talking? Boy, you get a lot of different stories! They’re all true. [Laughs] Each point of view is true. What are you going to do with that? I read to little teenagers on Monday nights. I was reading them an Isaac Babel [1894–1940] story about him getting bullied, and I said, “Look how many points of view you could tell this story from. If you read the story from the bully’s point of view, you wouldn’t feel bullied.” You can do that to any story. Edenfield: You have called yourself a realist. What did you mean by that? Dubus: I did? Edenfield: Yes. 146 conversations with andre dubus Dubus: That’s funny, because the other night I was lying in bed wondering what a realist is. [Laughs] It’s true! I don’t believe I can answer. What’s a realist? Edenfield...