Andre Dubus III

BIO

Andre Dubus III lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His novel, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, was a nominee for the 1999 National Book Award in Fiction. 

INTERVIEW

February 11, 2000

National Book Award Nominee Andre Dubus III took some time out of his writing and teaching schedule to speak with TBR Writer Liz Keuffer, a big fan of his nominated novel HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG. Down to earth and so friendly, Dubus takes us through his writing process, his family tree (his father was the legendary Andre Dubus and cousin is James Lee Burke), and his new novel in this effusive interview. Find out his exact words when he heard about his NBA nomination from a reporter (be warned, they are R-rated), his favorite quotes from esteemed authors, what book he wished he had written, and more.

TBR: Your book, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, is really driven by the characters. The Americans --- Kathy and Lester --- are people any of us could know, while the Iranian colonel provides an interesting contrast. They all feel very much like real people. What inspired these characters?  Are they based on people you know?

Andre Dubus III: Usually I can't really trace it in my fiction. In this case, I was very good friends with an Iranian when I was in college. Her father was a colonel in the Air Force under the Shah, so I got a good idea of what it was like under that regime. I witnessed his inability to find work when he came to this country. So it grew out of personal experience, personal contact with someone in that situation. Then I had another friend at another college who was Iranian and I pretty much immersed myself in the culture, eating the food, listening to the music. I was almost fluent in Farsi for a while. This was almost 20 years ago.

TBR: Which came to you first --- the characters or the plot?

Andre Dubus III:I never get a plot first. On purpose I try not to. I teach writing at Tufts College and Emerson College. I always counsel my writers around this. Everyone does it differently. It's important not to plot things out first and important to follow the character. I ask myself, "Do I believe he thinks this or feels this?" The story will then flow from the characters. I love this quote from Jane Burroway, "Plot is how we arrange the causal sequence of events that make up a story." I generally take two, three, to four years to write the story, then months more arranging it and putting the parts in sequence. You have to cooperate with the truth of a piece.

TBR: Kathy and Colonel Behrani both speak in the first person. Yet the cataclysmic character, Lester, is never given a voice in the book --- we only see him in third person, and then only in the second half. Why did you choose to handle him in this way?

Andre Dubus III: I tried various ways mainly. This is the way it came, the way it seemed to work. The colonel begins in the present tense. She's in past tense. I heard his voice in first person present, hers in first person past. There is a limited subjective narrator. As the second part of the book begins I was in the woods with Lester, listening to what he was thinking. It's an intuitive thing. Voices and points of view are very intuitive. I wait for the sound to come. They don't always come. I tried to write him different ways and it just sounded wrong. You have to take a detached approach. Let the characters speak to you in their voice.

TBR: Each of these characters is held in the grip of a single-mindedness, yet the Americans come across as more petty, more damaged than the Persian, who seems to have nobler intentions. Was this coincidental to these particular characters, or was this intentional --- do you see the two cultures as manifesting themselves this way?

Andre Dubus III: Flannery O'Connor says "Our beliefs are not what we see but the light by which we see." The "we" being fiction writers. Tim O'Brien said in an essay that fiction writers tend to want to "enter the mystery of things." It's one of the reasons I love to write. I'm drawn to these disparate characters. I want to know more about them. I was thinking about the colonel; I admired him and was completely on his side. As I was writing it I noticed that Kathy and Lester were the less attractive of the three. I didn't set out to write it this way --- hey, I love my country, I love America! I didn't purposely try to make a point --- I rarely do that in fiction. I think a writer should try to step away. Usually when I try to make a moral or philosophical point, it falls flat. The characters say we're not your puppets. But as writers we do have a point. We have that light that O'Connor speaks of.

TBR: Your portrayal of Persian culture (especially that of an officer under the Shah) is especially insightful. What sort of research did you do for this?

Andre Dubus III: I put that in my acknowledgments. My friends Kourosh Zomorodian and Ali Farahsat taught me almost all of what I know. Ali gave me a lot of the authentic words for Persian instruments and poetry.

TBR: You've lived quite a varied life, as a bartender, private investigator, bounty hunter, corrections counselor. How has this influenced (or helped) your writing?  

Andre Dubus III: I knew that if I told my publicist this it'd come back to haunt me!  Actually I was a bounty hunter and private investigator for about six months, back in my twenties. I started writing at 22, and I mostly picked jobs that gave me my mornings free to write. I worked a lot of nights. I was actually a bounty hunter for a while. I once had to go into Mexico after some guy. And being a private investigator meant mostly sitting in front of people's houses, watching them go inside to sleep --- suspected drug dealers and the like. I was a bartender for years, and for about 6-8 months I worked in corrections. I never wrote about those stories though. I think that everything you need is there already. Imagination is everything. Young writers ---especially boys --- seem to think you need to live an adventurous life to write, but it's all right there in your imagination. If you've been beat up once in your school yard, it's not that hard a stretch to imagine getting knifed in prison.  

For the last 10 years I've worked mostly as a college teacher and a carpenter. I actually wrote HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG in my car. I share an office at Tufts with four people and I've got three small kids at home. My car was the quietest place I could find to write. I write in longhand with a pencil anyway. I'd pull over in the mornings and work on my book. I once sat in front of an apartment building for four mornings in a row. Then one morning a cop friend of mine pulled over and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was writing a novel. He said the people in the apartment building thought I was casing the joint!  The next day I drove further down the road and found a quiet cemetery where I could work.

TBR: You come from a literary family --- your father being Andre Dubus and your cousin is James Lee Burke. How has this affected you, either positively or negatively? Do you think the writing life was inevitable for you?  

Andre Dubus III: It actually surprised the hell out of me! It was the last thing I wanted to do. You know I had the same name as my father, why would I want to write like him, also? Actually my parents were divorced when I was 10 and I was not around writers a whole lot. Well, there were writers around, but I wasn't that interested in what they were doing. I wanted to do something different. Then, when I was 21 or 22, I was dating this girl and she was reading a lot of fiction. So I started to read her fiction, and decided to try my hand at writing some; and when I did, I knew that was it. I felt like I was me for the first time.
  
TBR: What is your writing process like? Has it changed over the years?

Andre Dubus III: I've gone from a car to a room! I don't know, I've always tried to write blind --- to not think about it too much. I try to surrender to the story and follow it. I try not to get too distracted by style and word choice, I can make it pretty afterwards. Each time out I try to do something different. My last piece was a novella that was published in a magazine in which I used a lot of abstract language and writing. Now I'm doing more sensual writing, which I prefer. I don't really plan it. You have to just sit down, whether you feel like it or not, and keep moving your hand over the page, and hope something will come of it; and it usually does. As Blaise Pascal says "Anything written to please the author is worthless." I've gotten more patient with the process. As I've gotten older, I'm 40 now --- and fatherhood has really taught me this --- you don't care as much about your own life. With fatherhood you don't care as much anymore. You realize what's important (taking care of the kids) and it has made me more patient with my writing.

TBR: Do you ever think of your readers? Do you picture someone actually reading your book?

Andre Dubus III: I don't think about anyone --- I think is a great hindrance to the creative process. As I read my book over, I try to read it as if I've never seen it before in my life. I ask myself "Am I enjoying this? Should I continue?" I make myself the reader. If you write a good honest story, there will be people out there who want to read it. Trying to picture a literal audience will make you self-conscious.

TBR: Your first book was short stories, and now your last two were novels. Is the process for writing these different? Which do you prefer?

Andre Dubus III: I prefer writing the novel, though I think the short story is a higher art form. As Faulkner said:  when the writer first begins, they try their hand at poetry; when that fails, they try the short story; and when that fails, they write a novel. Short stories haven't been coming out of me as much. I've published three books and I've probably written five and a half. Most of what I write is longer fiction. Most of my short stories now feel like a part of something longer.

TBR: How did it feel when you found out you were nominated for the NBA? What thoughts ran through your head?

Andre Dubus III: I was completely stunned. It was never even on my radar screen. I didn't even know they were announced that time of year. I write in my unheated attic. I had my headphones on, my glasses; and my wife came upstairs with tears in her eyes. I thought something was wrong. She handed me the phone, and it was a reporter from our local paper. She said she wanted to get my reaction to being nominated for the National Book Award. I said "Are you fucking shitting me? Are you FUCKING SHITTING ME?" I must have repeated it 10 or 15 times. I was shocked --- stunned. It was like "What is this?!?"  Like an alien landing on my lawn. A very welcome alien, of course. Really, it's very encouraging. You have to not get too wrapped up in the awards, you can't covet them. But it's so encouraging, to get that recognition.  

TBR: Can you tell us a little bit about your next project?

Andre Dubus III: I'm always working on something. I'm working on something now, and it's a long something. I worked on HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG for four years, and my wife didn't hear a word about it until I was done. I tend to keep it absolutely quiet. It's like I tell my young writers: you are pregnant with stories, and you want to keep the womb closed and dark; keep feeding it. I never set out to write a novel. I get an idea and write it in my little notebook. Then I open the notebook and start looking at what's there. I wanted to write about this colonel for years, but I couldn't come to it. Then one day for my class I brought in this newspaper. Newspapers are a great place to get stories to spark your imagination. Imagination is fueled by the questions, not the answers. You have to keep asking yourself questions about the people. Well, there was this story about this woman who was living in her car outside this house that she'd been wrongfully evicted from. She went into the notebook. Then later I read about a person who'd bought a house at a sheriff's auction, and they had a mid-eastern name. Finally, I put it together --- what if the man who bought the house from this woman was my colonel? And that's how HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG was born.

TBR: What are you reading now?

Andre Dubus III: I'm reading WAITING by Ha Jin, and it's a wonderful book. I also just finished Graham Greene's THE END OF THE AFFAIR, and I didn't even know there was a movie of it. I loved the book. I'm also reading Larry Brown's novel JOE. I think young writers today need to read more widely. So much of writing growth comes from reading the work of others. Just read for the joy of it, and the lessons will hit your subconscious.  

TBR: What is one book that you love so much you wish you had written it?

Andre Dubus III: Oh, a great one is IRONWEED by William Kennedy --- a wonderful book. BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA by Dorothy Allison is masterful. And Larry Brown's FATHER AND SON. Those are three contemporary American novels, all of which are tremendous works.

TBR: What writers inspired you growing up, and now?

Andre Dubus III: Well, as I said, I didn't want to be a writer while I was growing up. But when I was 17, the first book that completely floored me was THE GRAPES OF WRATH. When I finished that I couldn't speak afterwards, I was so blown away. It had everything --- psychology, religion, art, economics. And I've also always listened to great music. I like some of your more literary songwriters --- Bob Dylan in my teens; Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen in my twenties. He wrote about neighborhoods I've lived in. I've done quite a bit of acting, too, so I've also been inspired by good plays. Not movies so much. I think writers today are too influenced by the visual. They should read more widely, discover the range and depth that prose has. Prose is superiorly suited to telling the human story. Though I think there is a resurgence of great fiction these days. There are some truly gifted American writers.  

TBR: You teach writing at Tufts and Emerson college. Do you really think writing can be taught?  

Andre Dubus III: Yes and no. Put quotes around the word teacher. I think of myself more as a guide. I can tell a writer what I think is working in their piece. I can teach them to work more on the process, to have a deeper awareness of the tools. I can get them to learn when you're going down a contrived or purple prosy path. I think two of the most important things that make a writer --- curiosity and endurance --- can't be taught. There has to be a burning need to find out what this person, this character, is like and to keep going back to that character, that work.

TBR: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?     

Andre Dubus III: Don't outline your stories. DO NOT outline your stories. I know some writers do this, but I think the writing process asks us to surrender to the mysteries of the unknown. Nowhere in our culture is this taught. You have to trust your gut, trust your characters to take a story where it's going to go; and, more often than not, it does that. That's my two cents.

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