Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dubus, Andre (Vol. 97) - David Toolan (review date 22 November 1991)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

David Toolan (review date 22 November 1991)

SOURCE: "Harshness to Poetry, Poetry to Revelation," in Commonweal, Vol. CXVIII, No. 20, November 22, 1991, pp. 696-97.

[In the following review, Toolan discusses Dubus's ability to turn poetry into revelation in Broken Vessels.]

Writers have their own set of moral commandments to add to the classic ten. "I can't write about any place I haven't smelled," admits Andre Dubus. On the night of July 23, 1986, that imperative had drawn him from his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, to a seedy section of Boston to do research for a story he was writing about a prostitute. On his way home late that night, on a four-lane segment of I-93 North, Dubus stopped to assist Luz Santiago and her brother Luis, whose car had collided with a motorcycle abandoned in the third lane. (The cyclist, drunk, had fallen off his bike, and fearing arrest, had wandered off.) Moments later, an...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Gene Lyons (review date 26 February 1977)
   2. Anatole Broyard (review date 20 November 1977)
   3. Gilberto Perez (essay date Winter 1980–81)
   4. William H. Pritchard (essay date Winter 1983–84)
   5. Andre Dubus with Thomas Kennedy (interview date ca. 1985)
   6. Steve Yarbrough (essay date Fall 1986)
   7. Paul Gray (review date 10 November 1986)
   8. Joseph J. Feeney (essay date 15 November 1986)
   9. Andre Dubus with Patrick H. Samway (interview date 15 November 1986)
   10. Art Seidenbaum (review date 23 November 1986)
   11. Clancy Sigal (review date 21 December 1986)
   12. Jack Sullivan (review date 11 January 1987)
   13. Ellen Lesser (review date 20 January 1987)
   14. Thomas E. Kennedy (essay date February 1987)
   15. Eva Hoffman (review date 6 November 1988)
   16. Richard Eder (review date 20 November 1988)
   17. John B. Breslin (essay date 2 December 1988)
   18. Ellen Lesser (review date 17 January 1989)
   19. Anne Tyler (review date 6 February 1989)
   20. Freddie Baveystock (review date 6-12 April 1990)
   21. Leonard Kriegel (review date 11 August 1991)
   22. Mark Hummel (review date October-November 1991)
   23. David Toolan (review date 22 November 1991)
   24. Publishers Weekly (review date 1 January 1996)
   25. Doris Lynch (review date 15 February 1996)
   26. Richard Bausch (review date 25 February 1996)
   27. Mark Shechner (review date 10 March 1996)
   28. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 14 March 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright