The Garden of Last Days by Andre
Dubus III
W. W. Norton & Company, 2008
Each of us can remember where we were on certain
days in our lives. Days of national significance (assassinations of the
Kennedys and King) or personal (birth of a child or death of a parent) are
indelibly imprinted on our minds.
It was a day like any other. I was walking down the hall in my school when a
teacher told me that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Towers.
The questions flowed. Accident? Intentional? Who? Why? I cannot, however,
remember the couple of days preceeding this horrendous event; they were just
part of the unfolding days of my life. Andre Dubus III imagines a few of those
days in a way that hardly any of us will ever forget. In doing so, he has
created a real world that is utterly plausible, peopled by "real"
characters going about their mundane activities, which just happen to lead to
something extraordinary.
Dubus had an image of money on a dresser and began a short story about one of
the strippers who had entertained one of the hijackers 3 nights prior to 9/11.
As his imagination opened up, he wondered how she might feel afterwards when
she learned the true identity of the man from whom she got this money. But, as
he wrote, it became clear that Bassam, the hijacker, needed to be heard. There
was more than one side to this story, and a novel began to emerge.
The Garden of Last Days is the best novel of the
year. Instantly interesting and engaging, it grabs one's attention and holds it
to the last page. It is compelling, thought-provoking reading that requires the
reader to bring a "willing suspension of disbelief" for full
appreciation. Strippers are human, too. Hijackers are human also. It is this
last characterization that causes the most dis-ease as we read, but the effort
is well worth the journey. We must trust the story and our imagination for
there is a danger in judging one another, a process which adds to conflict
between individuals, communities, and cultures.
Seven primary voices are heard throughout. Dubus cut out an additional five
voices and some 250 pages, including a gay professor who may very well appear
in another work. Told in the third person subjective, each characterization is
alive and rounded. April is a stripper at the Puma Club, a single mother who is
raising her pre-school daughter with love. She does not like her work, but she
is very good at it and wants to earn enough money to ensure that she and Franny
are secure. On this night, however, April, who dances as Spring, has to bring
Franny to the club because Jean, her sitter, has gone to the hospital with
heart issues. This sets into motion a string of actions that threatens to ruin
the lives we see within the world of this novel and, by extension, lives in our
real world.
Bassam al-Jizani, a young man from Saudia Arabia,
is in the club that night drinking heavily, smoking, and spending money as if
there were no tomorrow. His primary task is to not draw attention to himself,
to blend in. He hires April/Spring for a private dance in the Champagne Room.
He wants to know her real name and why she dances. She is "Spring" in
the club and does not want to share her name, but she does. Despite his
adherence to the Qur'an, Bassam has met his "virgins" on earth. He is
devoted to the task ahead of him, yet he is conflicted. While he abhors what he
is doing in the club, there is a fascination with the girls and especially the
beer and "the feeling of freedom it gives to him." Dubus did not want
to give Bassam a voice, but he kept insisting. Bassam is contrasted with his father,
a moderate Muslim, who tells him that jihad really means "a struggle
within yourself, that is all. It is a struggle to live as Allah wishes us to
live. As good people..."
AJ is separated from Deena and their son whom he dotes on. A good ole boy
construction worker, he lives now with his mother and drinks too much at the
Puma Club. Drunk, he is thrown out this night and his wrist broken in the
process. Lonnie Pike is the bouncer who threw him out. Nearly illiterate, he
avidly listens to Books on Tape and has strong feelings for April. Later,
Franny walks out of the club and AJ picks her up only to protect her, as he
sees it, and because he misses his son. "He liked her spunk, but what
would come of it? Spunk turns to sassy turns to bitch turns to whore. Just like
her mama."
While some may criticize The Garden of Last Days
because the ending for a particular character is a foregone conclusion, isn't
that the way Life actually is? Each of us makes choices in what we do. Each
choice helps make us become what we will become. Some of those choices are
self-limiting, leading us toward a specific path, in some cases a path of
destruction. For example, the anger evinced by AJ makes it clear that he is
headed for trouble. Yet, at the end, he seems to have achieved some sort of
redemption. Reread all those Shakespearean tragedies with their families
destroyed and blood everywhere. Every one of them ends on a slight uptick. In
"Romeo and Juliet," for example, the two families reconcile. The two
kids are still dead, but at least the families have learned and grown. Bassam
dies - we know this; I'm not giving anything away - but the other characters
learn from their experience.
When April learns of Bassam's actions, she can only say he was "like a
boy. Just some drunk and lonely boy." Listen to the news tonight and you
will hear a similar statement. A reporter will give a story about someone who
has murdered his wife and children. A neighbor will be quoted as saying,
"He was such a good neighbor. He seemed to be such a loving husband. I
don't understand how he could have done such a thing." We never know. What
can we say?
On the way to a Ph.D. in political science, Dubus went to Massachusetts
and took a year off. He lived in a welfare neighborhood, worked construction
during the day, and read philosophy at night. He was dating a girl who was
taking a writing class, and began to read fiction. Dubus was inspired to write
a short story about people. It wasn't very good, but he was hooked. While
writing, he was more "Andre" than ever. In the process of writing The
Garden of Last Days he saw a Charlie Rose interview with the director Mike
Nichols who noted that the storyteller asks what it is like to be in a story.
This means for Dubus that he becomes "pregnant with a story." Cells
are multiplying and he does not analyze it, think about it, or talk about it.
"Ideas bubble up and get sublimated" then result in a story. He
writes a couple of hours each day in long-hand with a pencil, then types it
into his laptop the next day and revises. Writing is "not telling but
finding something," he says. He quotes Grace Paley, "You write what
you don't know you don't know."
Married to the dancer Fontaine Dallas, they live outside Boston with their
three children. Andre Dubus teaches writing when he is not writing himself.
http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/gardenLastDays_2.htm
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