Andre Dubus III on Writing and Imagination
Glenda Ganung
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Life & Times
Andre Dubus III is the author of four books, Bluesmen, The Cagekeeper and Other Stories, House of Sand and Fog, and Garden of Last Days. House of Sand and Fog catapulted Dubus onto the literary scene after his books were chosen as Oprah's Book Club selections. Released as a movie in 2003, debut director Vadim Perelman's screenplay garnered sixteen film award nominations, including three Academy Award nominations. Dubus's most recent novel, Garden of Last Days, revolves around the happenstance encounter of April, a night club stripper and single mother working hard at a demeaning job to make a better life for her child, and Bassam al-Jazani, a Saudi jihadist with plenty of cash and zealous judgments to throw around. Sex, honor, parenthood and masculinity burst from the page over a sultry, Florida weekend before one of the most tragic and life-altering events of recent history, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Andre and I spent 45-minutes chatting about writing and the writing process. What follows is an excerpt of our conversation.
GG: I'm currently reading, Garden of Last Days and you've done a very good job of staying unbiased in your representation of Bassam, So I commend you.
AD: Well, you know, [laughs] not really. I'm awfully judgmental when I'm highly incensed. I have this belief that writers live two separate lives. We all have different lives and wear different hats whether we're writers or not, but I do think that it makes the kind of writing that I try to do, which is character driven fiction where I'm trying to imagine the lives of others as honestly and empathetically as I can, that in order to do that I really do have to reserve judgment, which is easier to do in some cases than in others. It really was very difficult for me to reserve judgment for the character of Bassam al-Jazani, the young Saudi hijacker. But he insisted on being in the book, I could just really feel him tugging my sleeve, and I finally had to relent. But I really had to work at it. I really had to work at not judging him. So I'm glad you're not seeing judging. Because I do think that if the writer's judging, the characters, just as in life - if someone's giving us the once over, and giving us a judgment, prejudging us, you know, pigeon-holing us - we kind of walk away from them, don't we. We don't want to be around these people. I think characters are the same way. They kind of walk away from the writer if the writer is summarily just thinking 'well, I've got you figured out,' and we're all far more complex aren't we?
GG: You seem to have mastered the multiple first person narrative from what I've read. I was just curious why you selected that narrative point of view, to do it multiple first-person.
AD: It was a process of elimination, and trial and error, as you well know as a writer. With House of Sand and Fog, I knew wanted, I knew I had a multiple, at least a two point of view story going on, then it became three points of view and three voices, and I tried various ways of doing it. I remember I actually tried third-person present-past with Kathy Nicolo, and she only came alive with first person past. That's when I started hearing her voice for myself. And then, I really wanted, if I could, a different sound for the Colonel so you would know immediately when you went to his point of view that it was different or distinct. And, I was playing around with third-person past, third-person present, first-person past, and only when I did first-person present--which by the way I was resisting because I'd done it my collection of the stories and I may want to do that again -- only when I went to first-person present did the Colonel come alive and I started to hear his rhythms. And isn't that weird because, you've read the story. He's the only character of the three who tells his tale in the present tense, and he's the only character of three who doesn't survive to tell it later. [. . .] Another thing that I was hoping to happen was, as you know the first-person present tense is very intimate, and immediate and it draws you in whether you want to be or not. And he's a bit of a stand-offish, proud military man from a culture that's not our own, and that's another thought that came to me while working on it that this might invite people in more readily.
GG:: Drawing on a culture that's not our own, both books, House of Sand and Fog and Garden of Last Days, really address in very contemporary form of a clash of cultures. Was that the intent?
AD: No. No, I wasn't aware of that, but, that's part of the thing that I love about writing, and maybe this is the central thing I love about writing is; I'll quote Grace Paley who I quote all the time and I'm sure I'll quote her when I get to Rollins next week; she's got this great line. She says "We write what we don't know we know." And I love that. For me the writing process is not one of exposition, but one of discovery where one line really leads to the next, to the next, to the next. And it's really a free-fall into the imagination and into the psyche, by the way all of which, all of us possess. We all possess imaginations. I also like what the writer Richard Bausch says, he says "If you think that you are thinking when you're writing, think again." He says that "We're much closer to the dreams inside of your mind -- so dream, dream, dream it through." And I like that because whenever I've tried to say something in my fiction writing, I've killed it. The same way, I don't know, a parent wants his child because he's big and strong to be a football player, and the child wants to be a dancer instead, you're going to run into trouble. I've learned of the years and I keep learning it again and again and again. I'm finishing a new book now and it's teaching me again and again that the writing is smarter than the writer, that the book knows more than the author of the book, and it really is a process of surrendering to what you are finding. That's not to suggest that it's just a gush session and you spit out whatever comes and that's it - we all know that writing is rewriting - but that's a long-winded way of saying that I try not to think about theme at all when I begin. I tend to do it that way because I find that I'm working more from the inside out than the outside in. The book will end up saying something about the clash of three who tells his tale in the present tense, and he's the only character of three who doesn't survive to tell it later. [. . .] Another thing that I was hoping to happen was, as you know the first-person present tense is very intimate, and immediate and it draws you in whether you want to be or not. And he's a bit of a stand-offish, proud military man from a culture that's not our own, and that's another thought that came to me while working on it that this might invite people in more readily.
GG: Drawing on a culture that's not our own, both books, House of Sand and Fog and Garden of Last Days, really address in very contemporary form of a clash of cultures. Was that the intent?
AD: No. No, I wasn't aware of that, but, that's part of the thing that I love about writing, and maybe this is the central thing I love about writing is; I'll quote Grace Paley who I quote all the time and I'm sure I'll quote her when I get to Rollins next week; she's got this great line. She says "We write what we don't know we know." And I love that. For me the writing process is not one of exposition, but one of discovery where one line really leads to the next, to the next, to the next. And it's really a free-fall into the imagination and into the psyche, by the way all of which, all of us possess. We all possess imaginations. I also like what the writer Richard Bausch says, he says "If you think that you are thinking when you're writing, think again." He says that "We're much closer to the dreams inside of your mind -- so dream, dream, dream it through." And I like that because whenever I've tried to say something in my fiction writing, I've killed it. The same way, I don't know, a parent wants his child because he's big and strong to be a football player, and the child wants to be a dancer instead, you're going to run into trouble. I've learned of the years and I keep learning it again and again and again. I'm finishing a new book now and it's teaching me again and again that the writing is smarter than the writer, that the book knows more than the author of the book, and it really is a process of surrendering to what you are finding. That's not to suggest that it's just a gush session and you spit out whatever comes and that's it - we all know that writing is rewriting - but that's a long-winded way of saying that I try not to think about theme at all when I begin. I tend to do it that way because I find that I'm working more from the inside out than the outside in. The book will end up saying something about the clash of cultures, or the American dream, or the immigrant experience, or terrorism, or the objectification of women, etc., but it's not done on purpose by me, if that makes sense.
GG: I'm having a little trouble with Garden of Last Days. I'm struggling with it on a personal level because we lost a very good family friend on Flight 11.
AD: Ah. Well that's understandable, and I appreciate you struggling.
GG: You know, but that's part of life. You kind of have to struggle through certain things.
AD: And there's something to be said for not being ready to read something at certain times in one's life and putting it down until someone is ready. I think that's also true about writing. One thing I hear myself telling my own students. Writing is about going to the truth of the matter, and if you find yourself writing about something that's too close to home, that's still too much of a wound and you don't feel you're able to go to the truth of the matter, then it's not an act of cowardice to put it aside and write about something else. There are thousands of other things to write about. Put it away for ten, twenty years and go back to it when you're able to go to the truth of the matter. That's true about reading, too.
GG: The next question is where we see the face of contemporary literature going, how it's evolving. Where do you see that going? I ask because you've had a novel made into a movie, and we see more and more entertainment today, television and movies, based on actual events. Is literature becoming just fictionalized events of true life, sort of like reality TV.?
AD: No. No, I don't think so, and I have another concern, it's two-fold. First, let me say that I travel a lot, I read a lot of works in progress, I've judged contests and I've read a lot, and I think first of all - the hopeful note is - people are churning out some wonderful work. I know there's this fear of a big decline in readership, but you know, this past year publishers had a banner year. Even with this bad economy, they sold a record number of books, serious books, fiction and creative non-fiction. What I see that troubles me is there has been a steadily declining problem with attention in both readers and writers. I taught a workshop a few years ago, and the novel in the class was beautifully written. The first six or seven pages was a very languid, lush description of a river valley, and then on page seven we go into the home of the protagonist and a husband slaps a wife. Seven or eight of my ten graduate students insisted that the novel begin with the slap on page seven because it would get the reader more interested and, frankly, they found the first six pages kind of boring. [Laughs] And that, to me, that rubs me the wrong way, I mean the novel especially. I really love the novel as a form. I love how much it can hold and what it can do. God, they should read some Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck, they're going to take fifty pages before they get to the 'slap,' and that's good for the reader, and it's an important part of what the novel does. Wagner's got this great line which I'm going to butcher, but he said that what the writer does is that he "freezes time, so that in 100 years, when the reader reads it, it moves again." Isn't that beautiful? So my concern, what I'm seeing, is that the slow, careful fall into language that is literature, and the fast, clipped, supersonic DSL speed of these hi-tech gadgets that we're friggin' addicted to, are competing. I think it's affected the pacing of writing, and maybe that's where I agree a little bit with your point. What I keep hearing myself say is that the job of literature is not to give the reader information, that's the job of the news. Our job, as writers, is to give the reader an experience.
GG: I'm currently reading, Garden of Last Days and you've done a very good job of staying unbiased in your representation of Bassam, So I commend you.
AD: Well, you know, [laughs] not really. I'm awfully judgmental when I'm highly incensed. I have this belief that writers live two separate lives. We all have different lives and wear different hats whether we're writers or not, but I do think that it makes the kind of writing that I try to do, which is character driven fiction where I'm trying to imagine the lives of others as honestly and empathetically as I can, that in order to do that I really do have to reserve judgment, which is easier to do in some cases than in others. It really was very difficult for me to reserve judgment for the character of Bassam al-Jazani, the young Saudi hijacker. But he insisted on being in the book, I could just really feel him tugging my sleeve, and I finally had to relent. But I really had to work at it. I really had to work at not judging him. So I'm glad you're not seeing judging. Because I do think that if the writer's judging, the characters, just as in life - if someone's giving us the once over, and giving us a judgment, prejudging us, you know, pigeon-holing us - we kind of walk away from them, don't we. We don't want to be around these people. I think characters are the same way. They kind of walk away from the writer if the writer is summarily just thinking 'well, I've got you figured out,' and we're all far more complex aren't we?
GG: You seem to have mastered the multiple first person narrative from what I've read. I was just curious why you selected that narrative point of view, to do it multiple first-person.
AD: It was a process of elimination, and trial and error, as you well know as a writer. With House of Sand and Fog, I knew wanted, I knew I had a multiple, at least a two point of view story going on, then it became three points of view and three voices, and I tried various ways of doing it. I remember I actually tried third-person present-past with Kathy Nicolo, and she only came alive with first person past. That's when I started hearing her voice for myself. And then, I really wanted, if I could, a different sound for the Colonel so you would know immediately when you went to his point of view that it was different or distinct. And, I was playing around with third-person past, third-person present, first-person past, and only when I did first-person present--which by the way I was resisting because I'd done it my collection of the stories and I may want to do that again -- only when I went to first-person present did the Colonel come alive and I started to hear his rhythms. And isn't that weird because, you've read the story. He's the only character of the three who tells his tale in the present tense, and he's the only character of three who doesn't survive to tell it later. [. . .] Another thing that I was hoping to happen was, as you know the first-person present tense is very intimate, and immediate and it draws you in whether you want to be or not. And he's a bit of a stand-offish, proud military man from a culture that's not our own, and that's another thought that came to me while working on it that this might invite people in more readily.
GG:: Drawing on a culture that's not our own, both books, House of Sand and Fog and Garden of Last Days, really address in very contemporary form of a clash of cultures. Was that the intent?
AD: No. No, I wasn't aware of that, but, that's part of the thing that I love about writing, and maybe this is the central thing I love about writing is; I'll quote Grace Paley who I quote all the time and I'm sure I'll quote her when I get to Rollins next week; she's got this great line. She says "We write what we don't know we know." And I love that. For me the writing process is not one of exposition, but one of discovery where one line really leads to the next, to the next, to the next. And it's really a free-fall into the imagination and into the psyche, by the way all of which, all of us possess. We all possess imaginations. I also like what the writer Richard Bausch says, he says "If you think that you are thinking when you're writing, think again." He says that "We're much closer to the dreams inside of your mind -- so dream, dream, dream it through." And I like that because whenever I've tried to say something in my fiction writing, I've killed it. The same way, I don't know, a parent wants his child because he's big and strong to be a football player, and the child wants to be a dancer instead, you're going to run into trouble. I've learned of the years and I keep learning it again and again and again. I'm finishing a new book now and it's teaching me again and again that the writing is smarter than the writer, that the book knows more than the author of the book, and it really is a process of surrendering to what you are finding. That's not to suggest that it's just a gush session and you spit out whatever comes and that's it - we all know that writing is rewriting - but that's a long-winded way of saying that I try not to think about theme at all when I begin. I tend to do it that way because I find that I'm working more from the inside out than the outside in. The book will end up saying something about the clash of three who tells his tale in the present tense, and he's the only character of three who doesn't survive to tell it later. [. . .] Another thing that I was hoping to happen was, as you know the first-person present tense is very intimate, and immediate and it draws you in whether you want to be or not. And he's a bit of a stand-offish, proud military man from a culture that's not our own, and that's another thought that came to me while working on it that this might invite people in more readily.
GG: Drawing on a culture that's not our own, both books, House of Sand and Fog and Garden of Last Days, really address in very contemporary form of a clash of cultures. Was that the intent?
AD: No. No, I wasn't aware of that, but, that's part of the thing that I love about writing, and maybe this is the central thing I love about writing is; I'll quote Grace Paley who I quote all the time and I'm sure I'll quote her when I get to Rollins next week; she's got this great line. She says "We write what we don't know we know." And I love that. For me the writing process is not one of exposition, but one of discovery where one line really leads to the next, to the next, to the next. And it's really a free-fall into the imagination and into the psyche, by the way all of which, all of us possess. We all possess imaginations. I also like what the writer Richard Bausch says, he says "If you think that you are thinking when you're writing, think again." He says that "We're much closer to the dreams inside of your mind -- so dream, dream, dream it through." And I like that because whenever I've tried to say something in my fiction writing, I've killed it. The same way, I don't know, a parent wants his child because he's big and strong to be a football player, and the child wants to be a dancer instead, you're going to run into trouble. I've learned of the years and I keep learning it again and again and again. I'm finishing a new book now and it's teaching me again and again that the writing is smarter than the writer, that the book knows more than the author of the book, and it really is a process of surrendering to what you are finding. That's not to suggest that it's just a gush session and you spit out whatever comes and that's it - we all know that writing is rewriting - but that's a long-winded way of saying that I try not to think about theme at all when I begin. I tend to do it that way because I find that I'm working more from the inside out than the outside in. The book will end up saying something about the clash of cultures, or the American dream, or the immigrant experience, or terrorism, or the objectification of women, etc., but it's not done on purpose by me, if that makes sense.
GG: I'm having a little trouble with Garden of Last Days. I'm struggling with it on a personal level because we lost a very good family friend on Flight 11.
AD: Ah. Well that's understandable, and I appreciate you struggling.
GG: You know, but that's part of life. You kind of have to struggle through certain things.
AD: And there's something to be said for not being ready to read something at certain times in one's life and putting it down until someone is ready. I think that's also true about writing. One thing I hear myself telling my own students. Writing is about going to the truth of the matter, and if you find yourself writing about something that's too close to home, that's still too much of a wound and you don't feel you're able to go to the truth of the matter, then it's not an act of cowardice to put it aside and write about something else. There are thousands of other things to write about. Put it away for ten, twenty years and go back to it when you're able to go to the truth of the matter. That's true about reading, too.
GG: The next question is where we see the face of contemporary literature going, how it's evolving. Where do you see that going? I ask because you've had a novel made into a movie, and we see more and more entertainment today, television and movies, based on actual events. Is literature becoming just fictionalized events of true life, sort of like reality TV.?
AD: No. No, I don't think so, and I have another concern, it's two-fold. First, let me say that I travel a lot, I read a lot of works in progress, I've judged contests and I've read a lot, and I think first of all - the hopeful note is - people are churning out some wonderful work. I know there's this fear of a big decline in readership, but you know, this past year publishers had a banner year. Even with this bad economy, they sold a record number of books, serious books, fiction and creative non-fiction. What I see that troubles me is there has been a steadily declining problem with attention in both readers and writers. I taught a workshop a few years ago, and the novel in the class was beautifully written. The first six or seven pages was a very languid, lush description of a river valley, and then on page seven we go into the home of the protagonist and a husband slaps a wife. Seven or eight of my ten graduate students insisted that the novel begin with the slap on page seven because it would get the reader more interested and, frankly, they found the first six pages kind of boring. [Laughs] And that, to me, that rubs me the wrong way, I mean the novel especially. I really love the novel as a form. I love how much it can hold and what it can do. God, they should read some Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck, they're going to take fifty pages before they get to the 'slap,' and that's good for the reader, and it's an important part of what the novel does. Wagner's got this great line which I'm going to butcher, but he said that what the writer does is that he "freezes time, so that in 100 years, when the reader reads it, it moves again." Isn't that beautiful? So my concern, what I'm seeing, is that the slow, careful fall into language that is literature, and the fast, clipped, supersonic DSL speed of these hi-tech gadgets that we're friggin' addicted to, are competing. I think it's affected the pacing of writing, and maybe that's where I agree a little bit with your point. What I keep hearing myself say is that the job of literature is not to give the reader information, that's the job of the news. Our job, as writers, is to give the reader an experience.
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