The Associated Press Write what you know. It’s an adage drilled into anyone who’s ever put pen to paper or fingers to keys. It’s also what makes memoirs such a test for fiction writers.
| Book review |
| ‘Townie: A Memoir’ |
| Author: Andre Dubus III |
| Publisher: W.W. Norton |
| Price: $25.95 |
| Pages: 400 |
Andre Dubus III passes that test with the highest marks in “Townie.” It’s a searing memoir; a punch in the gut, literally. The son of acclaimed short story writer Andre Dubus II and the author of “House of Sand and Fog” strips away all pretense and writes with blunt honesty about how he became a writer and the things he regrets along the way.
The book’s central theme is violence — its genesis, consequences and addictive nature. One of four children from a broken family in the mill towns of northeastern Massachusetts (dad leaves mom for a younger woman and a teaching job across the Merrimack River at the now-defunct Bradford College), Dubus witnesses fights in streets and bars from an early age. He and his siblings are picked on mercilessly.
When Dubus channels his teenage rage into bodybuilding, obsessively doing hard-core workouts from muscle magazines, joining a gym and then a boxing club, he becomes the perpetrator rather than the victim of violence. After his sister is gang-raped, he becomes obsessed with protecting his family, trying to fill a hole left by his absent father.
The book is filled with meditations on violence. Here’s Dubus on what it feels like to punch someone in the face: ” … you have to move through two barriers to do something like that, one inside you and one around him, as if everyone’s body is surrounded by an invisible membrane you have to puncture to get to them.”
“Townie” captures the birth and evolution of that voice — one worth listening to by anyone who believes in the redemptive power of the written word.
