Yes, Virginia, Adjuncts Do Win Guggenheims
by
Chris Cumo
Andre Dubus III
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The genes for prose run deep in the Dubus family. Like his father, Andre Dubus
III writes award-winning fiction. His novel House of Sand and Fog (Norton,
1999) was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1999. The next
year Oprah Winfrey made it an Oprah Book Club selection, praised it as her “favorite
read this year,” and had him on her show. His first two novels sold 10,000 copies
combined. House of Sand and Fog has nearly two million copies in print. He went
from giving readings to ten or fifteen people to crowds of 500 The Boston
Herald announced that “Andre Dubus III has hit pay dirt.”
“I was stunned,” Dubus admits. “It’s a strange experience. It’s a good strange,
though. I’ll take it.”
This success is all the more striking for a man who majored in sociology in
college, read little fiction, and aspired to be an activist. He carried this
fervor to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was a Ph.D. candidate
in Marxist social science. But he felt restless and petitioned for a year’s
leave, during which he worked construction and trained for the
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