<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: I will introduce Mr.Dubus' books more in Japan.
Review: 13 years ago, in 1987, I met Mr. Dubus at Charles Hotel, Boston. I was 27 years old and stayed at Bradford College as an international student. After coming back home, I approached several publishers to issue Mr. Dubus' excellent books in Japanese. In 1992, I could accomplish to publish his beatiful novellas and stories in three books. I was so happy to introduce his work for Japanese readers. Mr. Dubus was happy too, and wrote to me about his impressions. Time has gone. I heard the news of his death just two days ago. Beyond grief, I'm going to read deeply this book and translate from English to Japanese, and then introduce his works to Japanese readers more, certainly. I would like to visit Haverhill at the anniversary of his death. I pray for the repose of Mr. Dubus' soul.
Rating: 
Summary: A Patchwork Quilt
Review: A book of occasionally lovely short essays surrounded by a battery of incidental writing that should've been omitted. Dubus at his best, only evident here now and then, offers us writing that builds slowly, gathering a few seemingly unrelated details and weaving them into something uniquely powerful. It shouldn't be surprising then to know that the essays in this book that don't hold up well are all too abbreviated and short, more editorial than essay, ending just as they've begun. His religious thoughts, obviously sincere but still cloying, further interrupt the book's best moments. Dubus however knows when he's on to something, and the essays here that stand out, such as that concerning the suicide of a gay military officer, show why Dubus earned his reputation as a craftsman. Much like his seminal story "A Father's Story," this essay tells us as much of the narrator as it does of the narrative's events. It's writing like this that shows the gulf between Dubus at his best, and Dubus simply on a friendly ramble, unable to mask his innate sadness -- both before and after the accident that left him in a wheelchair. Perhaps that's what this book suggests most clearly, that Dubus never could quite wheel himself away from a depression that's as present as the author's almost daily upper-case Communion.
Rating:
Summary: Keep Praying
Review: All over the world we should keep praying for the repose of Andre Dubus's soul, for he prayed so hard for the repose of ours. This book, and any of the others, is for the reader tired of glitz but unwilling to be dishonest. Do you believe in poetry after Auschwitz? How about the Eucharist after Columbine? If these are hard questions, read Andre Dubus. He had no easy answers, no quick fixes. Nor did he whine and celebrate postmodern angst while complacently tenured in an MFA program. God but we needed him!
Rating:
Summary: Andre Dubus bares his soul and by doing so teaches us.
Review: Andre Dubus prsents us with his most intimate thoughts about life and intimate relationships. He bares all, and, in doing so, creates a medium for communication with the the most inner emotions in us all. By writing of his fear, his anger and frustration, his inability to express deep felt emotions, he touches base with men,in particular, who share similar feelings; feelings that are often kept within oneself, but beg to be spoken of. This collection of essays is also a tribute to one mans's struggles with his faith in God and in his own humanity as he struggles with life's tragic events. Dubus shows us, by writing of his personal tragedies, that despite all we are survivors. We continue through life because we are continously in the process of becoming and are capable, if we permit it, of redefining ourselves as we or life demand it.
Rating: 
Summary: Andre Dubus's Daily Bread
Review: Shortly after finishing "Meditations from a Moveable Chair," I learned that Andre Dubus recently had died. I was surprisingly startled, considering he was a man I never knew and with whose writing I was merely acquainted. My reaction to the news of his death speaks a great deal about the quality and affect of Dubus's austere and confessional prose. Dubus frequently ends essays in the volume by recalling the moment of the piece's composition, as if he is offering not only an artifice, but the origin, the spot of time and emotion and weather from which the artifice emerged. In some cases this device seems almost redundant because his clean prose seemed already imbued with the sense of being written; especially in the essays recounting manual labor, jogging, or taking churchyard laps in his wheelchair, I imagined a man (resembling the man with a pensive scowl on the book's jacket) hammering away at a typewriter. Despite being about many quotidian things, Dubus's writing reminds me of a few lines of "Song of Myself": "Not words of routine this song of mine, / But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring." Although at times I thought Dubus was simply repeating himself, well, simply, I found the essays to be touching, memorable, and a pleasure to read. "Meditations from a Moveable Chair" is markedly anti-stoic: beneath its equivocal title, the volume effuses the pleasures and pain of life after a literal "wreck of body," and offers itself to its reader as a sacrifice and another one of Dubus's sacraments.
Rating:
Summary: The piece on Sacraments is alone worth the price of the book
Review: To enter the world of another mind is to discover we are all of one mind. Andre Dubus makes this possible by minding the business of living. Each grief, loss, and puzzlement he experiences is faced full on, letting us see how the prosaic details speak larger meanings when veiwed from the perspective of faith: life has meaning when I accept as a gift what I don't understand.
<< 1 >>
|
