A father's story andre dubus pdf

Any story I consider a favorite stirs up in me feelings of envy and wonder. “A Father’s Story,” by Andre Dubus, has this effect. On the first count, it’s the I-sure-wish-I’d-written-that moment. If you write and if you read, you know this feeling. Think early motivations. Maybe that feeling—we could dress it up and call it admiration, but that seems too mild—led you to write in the first place. Envy being the mother of imitation, maybe, hypothetically, it led you to write a story about a vampire gerbil that sucked fruit white. Gerbacula. Maybe you are very, very sorry about this.

On the second count, wonder; it’s when I stop reading and think, “I didn’t know you could DO that in a story,” or, to a lesser degree, “How did the writer pull that off?” Is literary fiction allowed to be as quick and funny as “You’re Ugly, Too”? How do the fragments in Harlan Ellison’s “The Man Who Rowed Columbus Ashore” remotely add up to a satisfying s