Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dubus, Andre (Vol. 97) - Gene Lyons (review date 26 February 1977)

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Gene Lyons (review date 26 February 1977)

SOURCE: "Eavesdropping on the Quotidian," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 224, No. 8, February 26, 1977, pp. 248-50.

[Lyons is an American author and critic. In the following review, he describes the stories in Separate Flights as snapshots of late twentieth-century American life and asserts that Dubus's fiction is characterized by finely crafted characters and believable circumstances.]

Madison Avenue and the organized churches aside, marriage has few defenders these days, and if a social unit can be invented that will move more lawn mowers, console TV sets, station wagons and automatic corn poppers than the nuclear family, the only place you will be able to see a married couple will be on educational television. At first glance Andre Dubus's Separate Flights, published in 1975 seems to be one more brief for the prosecution. After ten years of marriage here is how the narrator and...

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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