Poverty stricken adolescent Andre turns to violence is it because of the cultural, interpersonal, internal and familial conflicts he endures? And in the face of his violent acts he strives for clarity. I couldn't help but wonder if this contact schedule was self imposed or mandated. He quotes his father as saying he felt as though he was 'dating his children' since he was afforded only a weeknight and weekend day visitation schedule. As an adult, Dubus 111 clearly forgives his father and is abundantly understanding of why he and his sisters and brother were virtually ignored. His absent father, not there at all for young Andre and his siblings, is always on Andre's mind and in his heart. He is of in my generation, a teenager living with the backdrop of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Vietnam War on the television, the movie Billy Jack, Dave Brubeck on the parents turntable and lots available of drugs and sex. Dubus grows up in the mean streets near Boston. It is raw and naked, violent and gentle and is about redemption. I have mixed feelings about this book, Dubus 111's memoir. His memoir is a riveting, visceral, profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love. Only by becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself. The clash of worlds couldn’t have been more stark-or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father.

Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays.

He was on a fast track to getting killed-or killing someone else-or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. Andre Dubus III, author of the National Book Award–nominated House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days, reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him-until he was saved by writing.Īfter their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime.

Townie by andre dubus