Meditations from a Movable Chair: Essays Paperback – April 6, 1999

This is my first reading of Andre Dubus. It was an excellent introduction. I read Andre Dubus III's "Townie" and he talked so much about his father, Andre Dubus, that I thought I would buy one of his books. I was not disappointed. Meditations From a Movable Chair, is a book of short stories. They make you think. Andre Dubus was in an accident that rendered the lower half of his body dead. He was confined to a wheelchair, hence the "movable chair." Surprisingly, Dubus considers this a blessing. He was forced to see the world different, treat people differently, respond differently--all for the better. Dubus considers being cripple was one of the good things that happened to him. His short stories reflect Dubus' reflections from the wheelchair.

Though not at as great as Dubus' other collection of essays, "Broken Vessels", these essays are still worthwhile reading that has its moments of grace that permeates Dubus' other works. Dubus is a writer of great compassion for his subjects, both fiction and nonfiction, and this is on display. Though slight when compared to the others any fan of Dubus' will gladly welcome this work into their libraries.

An excellent look into the latter days of one of our greatest short story writers and a great companion to his son's memoir TOWNIE. I'd read it years ago because I'm a huge fan of this Dubus's short fiction, then read it again after listening to the audio book of Dubus III's TOWNIE and it really did feel as if the two books were having a conversation with one another that I was getting to eavesdrop on.

Many people are familiar with Andre Dubois's son and his book(an Oprah pick) The house of Sand and fog. Andre Duboius has long been considered a master of the short story, and the eye that served him well at that craft is equally appreciated when turned inward. DuBois was confined to a wheelchair when injured in an accident, and as a result, accepted the challenge to look inward. In essays detailing his struggle with mortality, his failings, his life as a writer and the struggle to find the sacred in the everyday Mr. DuBois is honest and open. At times, you may think the conclusions are a bit too pat or packaged, and yet, there is no doubt in regards to the sincerity.

Thank you

Required reading for a college class. Eh

Shortly after finishing "Meditations from a Moveable Chair," I learned that Andre Dubus recently had died. I was surprisingly startled, considering he was a man I never knew and with whose writing I was merely acquainted. My reaction to the news of his death speaks a great deal about the quality and affect of Dubus's austere and confessional prose. Dubus frequently ends essays in the volume by recalling the moment of the piece's composition, as if he is offering not only an artifice, but the origin, the spot of time and emotion and weather from which the artifice emerged. In some cases this device seems almost redundant because his clean prose seemed already imbued with the sense of being written; especially in the essays recounting manual labor, jogging, or taking churchyard laps in his wheelchair, I imagined a man (resembling the man with a pensive scowl on the book's jacket) hammering away at a typewriter. Despite being about many quotidian things, Dubus's writing reminds me of a few lines of "Song of Myself": "Not words of routine this song of mine, / But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring." Although at times I thought Dubus was simply repeating himself, well, simply, I found the essays to be touching, memorable, and a pleasure to read. "Meditations from a Moveable Chair" is markedly anti-stoic: beneath its equivocal title, the volume effuses the pleasures and pain of life after a literal "wreck of body," and offers itself to its reader as a sacrifice and another one of Dubus's sacraments.

A superb non-fiction collection by one of our great American writers.