The Cross Country Runner (Collected Short Stories and Novellas) - Softcover

Dubus, Andre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567926274 ISBN 13: 9781567926279

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2018

Synopsis

The Cross Country Runner brings together Andre Dubus's fifth collection of short stories and novellas, The Last Worthless Evening, and Voices from the Moon-his longest, most masterful novella-with previously uncollected stories, and a new introduction by PEN Faulkner Award-winning author Tobias Wolff. '''It's divorce that did it,' his father had said last night.'' So begins ''Voices from the Moon,'' the 126-page novella that shows Dubus at the height of his empathetic powers: the story alternates between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the five other members of his family; it takes place over the course of a single day. ''How rare it is these days,'' wrote John Updike in his New Yorker review of the novella, ''to encounter characters with wills, with a sense of choice.'' The four novellas and two stories of ''The Last Worthless Evening'' range further than in any previous Dubus collection: racial tension in the Navy; a detective story homage; a Hispanic shortstop; the unlikely pairing of an eleven-year-old kid and a dangerous Vietnam vet. Time magazine opined that ''Rose,'' the book's final novella, ''by itself is worth the price of the book; it is the most powerful entry in Dubus's impressive canon.'' Finally, this third volume in the series draws together for the first time many of Dubus's previously uncollected stories, including work from the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. The earliest story appearing here in book form for the first time - ''The Cross Country Runner'' - was first published in the long-defunct Midwestern University Quarterly in 1966 when Dubus was 30 years old and only recently graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The final story - the western-themed ''Sisters'' - is the last piece of fiction Dubus was working on when he died suddenly in 1999 at just 63 years old.

About this title

About the Author

Andre Dubus was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana to a Cajun-Irish Catholic family. He graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and later moved to Massachusetts, where he taught creative writing at Bradford College. His life was marked with personal tragedies, as are those of his protagonists - ostensibly ordinary men who are drawn to addiction and violence as methods to distract themselves from their woes. Unlike his characters, however, Dubus eventually found success and repute, as well as the corresponding offers from large publishers. He nevertheless remained loyal to Godine until the end of his career.

Review

A welcome gathering in a worthy project to bring Dubus' work to a new generation of readers. --Kirkus Reviews

...the three volumes reaffirm Dubus's status as a master, as an unparalleled excavator of the heart and its pains, its longings, its errors, its thumping against the constant threat of grief, despair, and loneliness. --Nina MacLaughlin, The Paris Review

...Dubus's frank and inquisitive stories of conscience are incisively of their time and ours. --Booklist Starred Review

Edition details

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1567926274
• ISBN 13: 9781567926279
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400