Conversations with Andre Dubus

Interview

230 Interview Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais / 1998 Glimmer Train Stories 31 (summer 1999): 39–59. reprinted in Leap of the Heart: Andre Dubus Talking. ed. ross gresham. new orleans: Xavier Press, 2003. 255–75. reprinted with the permission of the authors. Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais: For more than thirty years you have been publishing short stories almost exclusively. Your first published book, however, The Lieutenant, was a novel. In the past, you’ve said that book would have been better as a novella, even though it has all the characteristics of a novel. What would you have changed? Andre Dubus: I looked at The Lieutenant in the eighties because a small press reprinted it, and I had to read the galleys. I wouldn’t have cut it then because they wanted to print it as it was, and because I couldn’t figure how to change it. I don’t remember that novel, but I suspect I could have compressed some of it. I could not at twenty-nine have compressed more, though. If I had written it twelve years later, maybe I could have. Maybe I would have had fewer scenes. I couldn’t have made it twenty pages, but maybe one hundred and twenty. I was learning while writing that novel. JL/KR: You began a second novel, which was later abandoned, after the publication of The Lieutenant. Did any stories grow from that novel? AD: I had actually written a novel before The Lieutenant. I finally burned it after eighteen drafts because I had outgrown it. After The Lieutenant was published, I started one, and I think I was on the second chapter when I read a story by Chekhov called “Peasants.” It covers one family, one village, and one year in thirty pages. I went for a drive in New Hampshire, and when I came back, I read it again and thought, I have to learn how to compress. I never looked back again. No, I didn’t get any stories out of that novel. JenniFer levasseur and Kevin rabalais / 1998 231 JL/KR: Shortly after the publication of The Lieutenant, you wrote a screenplay based on the novel. AD: I wrote two drafts of a bad screenplay a year later and was paid. JL/KR: What kind of exercise was that for you? AD: It was so easy, and I think that is why it was such a bad screenplay. The producer said, “Go home and write the kind of movie you would like to see.” After I finished, he said, “There is too much dialogue. You’re thinking like a novelist. Ninety percent of this would be cut because the actors would express this with their bodies.” JL/KR: Would you have liked to see it made into a film? AD: I still would. I think it would make a good movie, and I could use the money. JL/KR: Several of your characters reappear throughout the stories. What do you feel are the advantages of having recurring characters in stories, rather than using these characters in a longer work? AD: I do sometimes plan to have several stories with the same character, but I have never thought of the advantages. It could be a limitation; I don’t know. I prefer reading stories. François Mauriac said, “I don’t know why anybody writes long novels. You could always write another [short] novel about the same people.” JL/KR: How do you know when a character will stay with you for more than one story? AD: Well, I wrote a series about a boy, Paul Clement, in Louisiana, and I knew I would write about him. When I got older and looked back at those stories, I realized those weren’t my parents; those were my memories of how I saw them when I was ten. The stories always changed anyway. There were also those three novellas—“We Don’t Live Here Anymore,” “Adultery,” and “Finding a Girl in America”—and I did not think there would be three. I wrote “We Don’t Live Here Anymore,” and I started worrying about the character Edith. I think she’s the only one in those stories I liked. Then I wrote “Adultery.” I was writing “Finding a Girl in America,” a story about a man whose girlfriend aborts his child, and I decided to put Hank Allison in there. There were also some Peter Jackman stories. I don’t think I knew...