Andre Dubus: Tributes, edited by Donald Anderson, is a eulogy for the late master of the short story... Anderson has found thirty-eight distinct contributors who offer insights into Dubus’ life and work. We hear from his son, Andre Dubus III; his agent, Philip G. Spitzer; fellow writer, Frederick Busch; his first publisher, David R. Godine; his sister, Kathryn Dubus; friend, Tobias Wolff; first cousin, James Lee Burke, and those who knew him only through his writing: Marilyn Abildskov, Darrell Spencer, and James Hughes Meredith... This collection remembers Dubus in all facets of his life, from childhood to the Marines to Iowa and through three marriages, three divorces, and a life altering hit-and-run accident. The collection isn’t just about remembering the man. Tributes offers lessons on craft, discipline, generosity, faith, and perseverance. But above all it is a tribute to the master.
—Albry Montalbano, Literary Review
A few years back, Andre wrote to me about a story of mine he’d chanced upon. To my great pleasure, he made a point to praise its economy. “I so much admire distillation,” he said, writing in pencil on paper torn from a Big Chief tablet, the kind of tablet he would have known we’d both remember from school. True or not, I see Andre writing his stories longhand—first in pencil on paper—the least technological connection from his hand to his heart to the page. I see him thus armed and scribbling the large and small trespasses we all commit in the name of hope and love and fear and despair and longing.
—from “Into the Silence,” by Donald Anderson