W. W. Norton, 2011
Townie is an interesting meditation on the insidious pervasiveness of one man's personal taste for violence. While the young Dubus (The Garden of Last Days) often thought of ways in which to respond to situations with physical violence, the actual instances are fewer than I was used to seeing in a typical modern high school. He speaks of violence, his desire to hurt someone, yet he seldom resorts to the actual act. When he does, however, he reacts full force, flat out, no holds barred. He is in it to win it.
The writer Andre Dubus III was first obscured by his father's status in the university community and his literary fame. Dubus III began to establish his writing reputation and then came House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days which cemented his name in the forefront of American literary efforts. This last novel, too, had more than its share of violence revealed in its characters.
Two major conflicts drive this compelling memoir. The first is the eternal conflict between town and gown, the citizens of the town where a university is located versus the professors and staff of that university. This is reflected in the status of his father, a revered professor who divorced Andre's mother. While he enjoys all the perks of the professorial mystique - money and girls in his case - she struggles as a single mother doing her best to ensure that Andre and his sister and brother are fed and clothed. It doesn't always work well.
Townie is an interesting meditation on the insidious pervasiveness of one man's personal taste for violence. While the young Dubus (The Garden of Last Days) often thought of ways in which to respond to situations with physical violence, the actual instances are fewer than I was used to seeing in a typical modern high school. He speaks of violence, his desire to hurt someone, yet he seldom resorts to the actual act. When he does, however, he reacts full force, flat out, no holds barred. He is in it to win it.
The writer Andre Dubus III was first obscured by his father's status in the university community and his literary fame. Dubus III began to establish his writing reputation and then came House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days which cemented his name in the forefront of American literary efforts. This last novel, too, had more than its share of violence revealed in its characters.
Two major conflicts drive this compelling memoir. The first is the eternal conflict between town and gown, the citizens of the town where a university is located versus the professors and staff of that university. This is reflected in the status of his father, a revered professor who divorced Andre's mother. While he enjoys all the perks of the professorial mystique - money and girls in his case - she struggles as a single mother doing her best to ensure that Andre and his sister and brother are fed and clothed. It doesn't always work well.
The second conflict is internal to Dubus. To strike out at his tormentors or not, that is the question. Early on, the latter is always the answer because he was a small kid, hiding all the time, keeping a low profile. By the time he saw the movie "Billy Jack" at age eleven, he was already into drink and drugs. Then, when Dubus was 13, his younger brother was beaten up and Dubus's response was to go to his room and begin pushups and situps. By 16 his body had hardened and he had become deadly serious about fitness. His grades improved and the boy who could not throw a baseball at 14 began to run cross country. He chose better friends and learned to box. Eventually, he started and stopped college.
While out of college he worked the day shift at a gas station and successfully defended both his brother and older sister in separate fights. He realized fighting was "different from sex where if both want it, the membranes fall away, but with violence you had to break that membrane yourself, and once you learned how to do that, it was easier to keep doing it." Living a peripatetic life, he was back in college and partying with his father. After graduate school in Texas, he returned to the Boston area to a carpentry job. Reading Marx and Engels, he began to write. After a spell in Colorado, he wrote the short story "Forky," which was sold to Playboy for $2,000 and he was headed in the right direction.
While out of college he worked the day shift at a gas station and successfully defended both his brother and older sister in separate fights. He realized fighting was "different from sex where if both want it, the membranes fall away, but with violence you had to break that membrane yourself, and once you learned how to do that, it was easier to keep doing it." Living a peripatetic life, he was back in college and partying with his father. After graduate school in Texas, he returned to the Boston area to a carpentry job. Reading Marx and Engels, he began to write. After a spell in Colorado, he wrote the short story "Forky," which was sold to Playboy for $2,000 and he was headed in the right direction.
On a trip to England, at his cousin's home in Oxford, a large black preacher appeared to him in a dream and said, "You're gonna die!" This was his epiphany. He realized that his fighting was a struggle against a childhood of being small, afraid, and passive. Not a religious person, he picked up a tiny New Testament and eventually found the Gospel of Matthew and the verse, "Love one another." That was the turning point that enabled him to reconcile with his personal demons, his parents, and siblings.
This episodic memoir compares favorably with a picaresque novel. An authoritative book, it is a reflection on the power of violence and its hold on Dubus and his struggle to break free. Townie is an important, revealing memoir that can be enjoyed both for what it says about Dubus and for its imposing literary merit.
This episodic memoir compares favorably with a picaresque novel. An authoritative book, it is a reflection on the power of violence and its hold on Dubus and his struggle to break free. Townie is an important, revealing memoir that can be enjoyed both for what it says about Dubus and for its imposing literary merit.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
