Read The Last Worthless Evening Online
Authors: Andre Dubus
The Dubus family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, around 1941. Andre Jr., stands in front, while his father, Andre Sr.; mother, Katherine; and sisters, Elizabeth and Kathryn, from left to right, stand in the back.
Dubus's freshman or sophomore school photo from Cathedral High School, around 1951. Dubus gave this photo to his recently married sister with a note on the back saying, jokingly, “To a good cook from the only one polite enough to eat her meals.”
A fifteen-year-old Dubus, seen here in 1952.
Dubus as a young Marine in Quantico, Virginia, where he received his training and became a commissioned officer in 1957.
Dubus around 1967, while he was working at Bradford College in Bradford, Massachusetts. This photo was taken by one of his students.
A photo of Dubus taken by a fellow student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City, around 1965. This photo was used as a dust jacket picture as well as in a newspaper story from Dubus's hometown announcing the publication of his first novel,
The Lieutenant
(1967).
Dubus in Iowa with his daughter Cadence in 1983. Cadence was born on June 11, 1982.
Dubus with his sister Kathryn in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in October of 1987, the first time Kathryn saw Andre after the car accident that claimed his left leg.
The signatures of six participants in a lecture series organized by Seattle Arts & Lectures from 1989 to 1990. Among the participants were John McPhee, Joyce Carol Oates, and Andre Dubus.
A typed manuscript of Dubus's personal essay “Love in the Morning,” which centers on Dubus's spiritual experience of morning Mass while confined to a wheelchair. It features a note and his signature, dated September 20, 1994. He later said of the essay that he “knew before starting it that it was coming like grace to me, and I could receive it or bungle it, but I could not hold it at bay.”
Andre Dubus III with his dad in the mid- to late-1990s. Andre III has gone on to enjoy a successful literary career, publishing five books, including the National Book Award finalist
The House of Sand and Fog
(1999) and
The Garden of Last Days
(2008), both of which were
New York Times
bestsellers.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Deaths at Sea
first appeared in
Quarterly West
; “After the Game” in
Fiction Network
; “Dressed Like Summer Leaves” in
The Sewanee Review; Land Where My Fathers Died
in
Antaeus
and as a limited edition published by Palaemon Press;
Molly
in
Crazyhorse
; and
Rose
in
Ploughshares
.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following songs: “I Should Care,” by Sammy Cahn, Paul Weston, and Axel Stordahl, © 1944 (renewed) by Dorsey Bros. Music. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Music. All rights reserved. “Lush Life,” Billy Strayhorn, composer; Tempo Music, Inc., publisher. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Just One of Those Things,” by Cole Porter © 1935 (renewed) Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
copyright © 1986 by Andre Dubus
cover design by Alvaro Villanueva
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9958-6
This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com