Broken Vessels by Andre Dubus

Author:Andre Dubus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

1977

MARKETING

I LOVE SHORT stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice. We can sit all night with our friend while he talks about the end of his marriage, and what we finally get is a collection of stories about passion, tenderness, misunderstanding, sorrow, money; those hours and days and moments when he was absolutely married, whether he and his wife were screaming at each other, or sulking about the house, or making love. While his marriage was dying, he was also working, spending evenings with friends, rearing children; but those are other stories. Which is why, days after hearing a painful story by a friend, we see him and say: How are you? We know that by now he may have another story to tell, or he may be in the middle of one, and we hope it is joyful.

This is how we talk to each other, but for some reason people do not buy collections of short stories. I do, and I take them home and read the first line of each story; then I read them in the order the writer wanted me to. Some books of stories can be read in two or three sittings, like a novel. Others want to be read more slowly, one or two stories an evening, so their effects won’t be blurred. Since I was eighteen years old, I wanted a book of my own stories on my shelf. I got it when I was thirty-nine, but before that there were some low-key adventures and comedies.

Some editors wrote that my collection was weak. Those letters were more embarrassing than painful. You can’t be hurt because someone doesn’t like your work; there will always be someone who doesn’t, and very often with good reasons. The rejections which hurt deeply, for they drove me closer to admitting my hope was futile, were the ones that said: If you are writing a novel, or if you have one, or will have one, we will consider publishing these stories, or we will publish these stories. After we have published the novel.

A woman at a publishing house in Boston was one of the kindest and most encouraging editors during that time. For six weeks one summer she held my stories, and I felt they were in caring hands. We wrote letters which became as long and passionate as love letters: about Chekhov and writing and the short story as a form which publishers had to neglect, which she would probably have to neglect too, for she worked at a house that had to make money. No one can blame a publisher for that. So that woman and I had none of the solace that comes when you can rage at someone, can blame them. Like doomed adulterous lovers, we could only share our passion and futility and the wish that our lives had not come to this impasse.

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