Adultery and Other Choices by Andre Dubus (September 2019)
I decided months ago to work through Andre Dubus’s entire collected works. Adultery and Other Choices, despite my sniffy remarks regarding 'crumbling marriages' in yesterday's review of Separate Flights, proved worthy of my effort. It covers varied ground compared to his first collection, and I reread three times as many stories - ‘An Afternoon with the Old Man’, ‘Contrition’, and ‘The Fat Girl’. 'Contrition' wasn't my favorite reread, but I count the other two among my favorites from 2019. (I should note that ‘The Fat Girl’ seems widely considered among his very best stories.)
I read this collection about a year and a half ago and was surprised to see my notes almost triple in length on the second pass. It's probably a good sign for my reading eye, although perhaps a faint symptom of overindulgence, but in my defense the notes here were also longer than those for Separate Flights. In this collection, I noticed more insights into the universal and enjoyed how he brought them to life in his stories; in Separate Flights, I felt less certain at times about the broader applicability of its lessons.
The thought I liked the most was how people fear or fight change because their current lifestyle enables them to channel their full energy into a pursuit, challenge, or craft. I can certainly relate to that far better than I could have five years ago. There are likely an endless number of lifestyle changes available to me that would improve my life but it’s hard to see past the disruption such a change would have on the energy I could devote to my current commitments, each an activity I like very much. Of course, perhaps I'm simply living out another one of Dubus's insights - people who cannot express themselves often confuse what they like to do with what they have to do.
