In mid-1999, boasting a National Book Award nomination, Professor Andre Dubus III included the Tufts book store on the nationwide tour for his novel, House of Sand and Fog. Only a handful of students and faculty attended the reading. Then Oprah called.
Yesterday, when Dubus held his second reading on campus, the crowd overflowed into the Tisch hallway. The suddenly-prominent professor stood before a fawning audience, read a section of his novel, and explained the satisfaction- and financial prospects- of his recent inclusion on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club list. "I renamed all my kids Oprah," he said. "The boys are just going to have to get used to it."
Dubus received word of the Winfrey accolade while grating cheese in his Massachusetts residence. An Oprah representative informed him that House of Sand and Fog was to be included in a book club, but playfully refused to reveal her boss's name. Dubus was not particularly excited, having been included in various small book clubs in the past. "You must be sh-ting me," he said, when the caller ended the suspense.
Although Oprah is hardly a venerated literary critic, her selected books sell in the millions. Already, minions of her female viewers have flocked to bookstores. To Dubus, selling 20,000 copies of a book is "triumph land," and there are now one million copies of Sand and Fog in print.
According to his favorite anecdotes, the creative writing teacher can certainly use the money. Dubus, a part-time carpenter who says he teaches and works to supplement his writing income, told students yesterday that the increased sales would pay for a septic tank for his home. When he confirmed the Oprah news, his wife was upstairs, sewing upholstery for "extra income." And despite his newfound celebrity status, Dubus seems infatuated with his blue-collar childhood. His favorite new author? Larry Brown ? a high school graduate, former fireman, and self-trained author.
Dubus is also committed to teaching, and yesterday he assured an anxious questioner that he has no plans to leave the University.
"I can't believe that you get paid to sit in a room and talk to people who want to grow," he said. "I'll keep teaching. I love it here."
Current and former students dotted the audience. During the question/answer period, Dubus addressed familiar faces by name, at one point asking a student to finish a Grace Paley quotation he often uses in writing workshops. She was close, but Dubus interrupted as she fumbled the words. "We write what we don't know we know," he said.
In the case of House of Sand and Fog, what Dubus didn't know he knew were the complicated emotions of a former Iranian military official now living in California. Or, for that matter, the perspective of the female protagonist, a house cleaner who is unjustly evicted from her home and thrust into the arms of a married police officer. As the two characters' lives become irreversibly intertwined, Dubus alternates the first person point of view chapter-by-chapter. Notably challenging is the colonel's voice, whose authoritative narration is conveyed in Farsi-accented English.
In his talk, Dubus derided advocates of political correctness and encouraged writers to experiment with point of view- to write from a perspective they have never experienced. He did warn, however, that not everyone will embrace the finished product. Recently, a woman asked Dubus why he thought he could write from a female's perspective, referring specifically to a sex scene in the novel. "Did it work," he asked. She replied, "Well, it seemed like a man imagining what it's like to be a woman."
Dubus described the writing process as an agonizing struggle. "The inspiration's dead after the first writing session. Then there is four years of churning along," he told sophomore Ajahne Santa Anna, co-editor-in-chief of Onyx, when he asked Dubus about inspiration.
"He kept my attention and I didn't think an author could," said Santa Anna, adding that Dubus and he are "in the same boat," both dedicated to the craft but always looking for self-discipline. Dubus said that dedication, not talent, is the most important quality for an author.
According to Oprah, whose talk show will host Dubus in early January, the author's hard work has paid off. And if the royalty checks flow as predicted, the pay-off will be generous indeed. He still writes in his upstairs "office," composing his prose in longhand with a pencil, and wearing earmuffs to drown out the sounds of his playing children. But, he admits, there is added pressure to perform.
"When the world shines its light, it's a distraction," he said, fearful that the attention might disrupt his work. "I'm not going to write a line and say, 'Is Oprah going to like that?"
Yet he didn't protest too much, calling the pressures of fame "a good problem to have." But when asked about the million copies in bookstores throughout the country, his concern grew. "One million books to get rid of ? I hadn't thought about it that way. I'm doomed."
