The Open Road Blog

This week’s archival photo features author James Jones at the trailer camp where he worked. It is the site where Jones wrote From Here to Eternity in the late 1940s.

Raised amid the financial and cultural chaos of the Great Depression, Jones joined the army just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. A brief stint away from the army led him to Lowney Handy, the novelist who later became Jones’s confidant and mentor. Honorably discharged with what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Jones entered NYU and commenced his literary journey. He is best known for his second novel, ...

Today we are pleased to introduce the second part of our Critical Symposium on Andre Dubus. For this installment we interviewed Richard Ravin, another one of Dubus's former students.  In this special interview Ravin, who works in media, provides an intimate look at Dubus as a teacher and craftsman. To see more of Ravin's work about Dubus please read his essay on Dubus that appeared in Salon in 1999.

The Working Life of Andre Dubus

An Interview with Richard Ravin

On Dubus’s working methods

Andre, as I recall, wrote in long hand, and on typewriter after that. One of ...

Earlier this year Open Road debuted a new feature on its blog called the Critical Symposium. Our first symposium introduced three essays by critics discussing Stanley Elkin's status as a Jewish American writer. Today marks the 75th year since the birth of Andre Dubus and, as a special tribute, we are initiating a new Critical Symposium about the enduring significance of his work. Our first installment in this series is an essay by the writer Thomas E. Kennedy, who met Dubus in 1983 while earning his MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Kennedy is the author of numerous ...