Andre Dubus III, gives off an air of importance, though he never seems self-serving. He is certainly entitled to this impressive aura, though - his most recent book, The House of Sand and Fog, was chosen as one of Oprah's newest book club selections, and stands at number two on this week's New York Times Bestseller List.
The novel, The House of Sand and Fog, revolves around a woman, Kathy Niccolo, who loses her house to the government for back taxes that she does not owe. The story recounts her struggle to regain the house from the new owner, Colonel Behrani. Lester Burdon, the local sheriff, helps Kathy fight for the house - and falls in love with her along the way.
Dubus constructed the story line from several disparate sources. An article he clipped many years ago provided one inspiration, and describes the exact situation he re-created in his book - it concerned a woman who was kicked out of her house for taxes she did not owe. The man who bought the house in the real situation had an Arabic-sounding name, which reminded Dubus of the father of a college girlfriend, who was a former Colonel in the Shah's army in Iran and could only get menial jobs after arriving in the US.
Although Dubus has written two previous books, The House of Sand and Fog was the first to hit it big. It had sold 140,000 copies before Oprah Winfrey called Dubus asking if he'd like to appear on her show. After his consent, the book became part of Oprah's well-known book club, and sales shot up to one million, with another half-million produced in a subsequent printing.
Dubus summed the experience up in just a few words. "I'm dazed," he said.
He also put his sales figures in perspective: generally, one out of three books printed loses money; the average print run is only between 3,000 and 5,000 copies.
"That's not so many," Dubus said, smiling, "but you figure that's 5,000 strangers reading your work. That's not too bad."
Dubus has nothing but compliments for The Oprah Winfrey show. "Everyone was real classy and generous," he said. Even though it was a closed set, the staff let Dubus' wife and mother-in-law watch on a closed-circuit TV. At the end of the show, all the book club members received goodie bags - Dubus' mother, who was not able to attend the taping, received one as well, with hundreds of dollars worth of make-up and other items.
While Winfrey definitely helped in the book's success, Dubus also gives his editor, Alane Salierno Mason, tremendous credit. "I must have rewritten the book 20 times before I gave it to her, and eight to ten after she looked at it," Dubus said, laughing.
Of course, after all these rewrites, Dubus admitted that the repetition can prove to be a pain. "But that's good," he said. "That means you put everything you had into the work. If you're not sick of it, that means you still have creative juice left, and that should go into the writing."
In fact, Dubus has an entire philosophy on writing. He considers it a difficult pursuit, both psychologically and financially. "If you are writing well, you feel bad," he said. "Writing requires you to strip yourself naked in a life that requires you to be armored all the time. You have to strike a balance within yourself."
Striking that balance and creating what you consider a beautiful work does not guarantee any returns, financial or otherwise. "Writing is a solitary craft," Dubus said. "You can do it for a long time with nobody caring about you."
Dubus recounted at least half a dozen jobs he had held, including acting, bartending, cleaning, carpentry, and bounty hunting, each because they allowed him the time and financial security to write.
Dubus' desire to pursue such a difficult occupation was not a lifelong dream. Dubus' father, Andre Dubus, Jr., was a prolific and successful writer, and so Dubus wanted to do anything but write. In fact, he received a degree in social sciences at the University of Texas. However, one of his college girlfriends once had a crush on a writer, Joe Hurka. To investigate his competition, Dubus read one of Hurka's short stories, "The Diner."
"After that," he said, "I had a crush on him, too!"
Soon after, Dubus attempted to write his own short story. "It was awful, but writing it, I felt more like myself than ever before," he said. After that, he tried to write every day, even for just a little while. The girlfriend had gone the way that most girlfriends do. Hurka, on the other hand, stayed on as Dubus' "guardian angel."
In 1990, Hurka encouraged Emerson College to hire the up-and-coming Dubus as an English professor after reading his earlier work. Then, he pulled some strings at Tufts in 1996, where Dubus now shares an office with Hurka in East Hall.
Dubus is only teaching one course this semester - creative writing - though he usually adds freshman writing to his course load. But to the aspiring fiction author, he advises, "Don't take too many creative writing classes. A few, but not too many. Fiction writers shouldn't be in the realm of the theoretical."
