About the Book
From the literary master and best-selling author of Townie, reflections on a life of challenges, contradictions, and fulfillments
During bright summers in Louisiana, Andre Dubus III's grandfather taught him that men's work is hard. As an adult, whether tracking down a drug lord in Mexico as a bounty hunter or grappling with privilege while living with a rich girlfriend in New York City, Dubus worked--at being a better worker and a better human being.
In Ghost Dogs, Dubus's nonfiction prowess is on full display in his retelling of his own successes, failures, triumphs, and pain. In his longest essay, "If I Owned a Gun," Dubus reflects on the empowerment and shame he felt in keeping a gun, and his decision, ultimately, to give it up. Elsewhere, he writes of a violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood, about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity, about the things writers remember and those they forget. Drawing upon kindred literary spirits from Rilke to Rumi to Tim O'Brien, Ghost Dogs renders moments of personal revelation with emotional generosity and stylistic grace, ultimately standing as essential witness to the work of living a good life and testimony to the art of the essay.
"Andre Dubus III's idea of an essay is tantalizingly simple: tell something important that happened to him--suddenly having big money and not knowing quite how to cope with that, loving his long-divorced parents, growing up poor and outlasting it, not loving his dog as much as he worries he should. Here is human life often cloaked in transporting mystery. Dubus possesses a rare and empathetic brilliance."--Richard Ford
About the Author :
Andre Dubus III is the author of the highly acclaimed, award-winning memoir Townie, a New York Times bestseller, and of the #1 New York Times bestseller House of Sand and Fog. Townie made the list of the best books of 2011 for Esquire, Salon, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Washington Examiner, and AudioFile. House of Sand and Fog, the basis for an Academy Award-nominated motion picture, was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Book Sense Book of the Year, and an Oprah Book Club selection. His other works include a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman and The Garden of Last Days. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994 and The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the National Magazine Award for fiction, and was a finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. A member of PEN American Center, Dubus has served as a panelist for the National Book Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, has taught writing at Harvard, Tufts, and Emerson College, and is currently a full-time faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is married to the performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.
Andre Dubus III is the author of the highly acclaimed, award-winning memoir Townie, a New York Times bestseller, and of the #1 New York Times bestseller House of Sand and Fog. Townie made the list of the best books of 2011 for Esquire, Salon, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Washington Examiner, and AudioFile. House of Sand and Fog, the basis for an Academy Award-nominated motion picture, was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Book Sense Book of the Year, and an Oprah Book Club selection. His other works include a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman and The Garden of Last Days. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994 and The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the National Magazine Award for fiction, and was a finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. A member of PEN American Center, Dubus has served as a panelist for the National Book Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, has taught writing at Harvard, Tufts, and Emerson College, and is currently a full-time faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is married to the performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.
