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The cedar-shingled home that Andre Dubus III constructed for his household within the seaside city of Newbury, Mass., has 4 ranges that sprawl throughout 6,000 sq. toes, with loads of rooms that would have made a pleasant author’s workplace. But Mr. Dubus plies his commerce down within the mechanical room, close to the train gear and the boiler, in a lofted house that he constructed himself out of plywood.
Reached by a staircase almost as steep as a ship’s ladder, the room is not any wider than an outstretched arm and never for much longer, with low ceilings that amplify the sensation of being inside a tunnel. There is a window, however Mr. Dubus has coated it with a blanket to dam out the daylight. It serves solely as an escape hatch in case of emergency.
Writing longhand with a pencil and paper, he has produced 5 books on this cramped house. He refers to it variously as “my writing cave,” “my dream portal” and “the engine home.”
“It’s to not code,” Mr. Dubus, 64, mentioned one morning final month with a giant, hearty snort. “Actually, it’s a very unlawful dwelling. Just so you realize.”
The remainder of the home is inviting and comfy. Earlier, Mr. Dubus had been sitting on the couch along with his toes kicked up within the high-ceilinged lounge, which is lined with books that belonged to his late father, the acclaimed quick story author Andre Dubus, and dominated by a big stone fire.
But Mr. Dubus’s desire for working in a hardscrabble model of an artist’s garret by some means is smart. After all, his best-selling 1999 novel, “House of Sand and Fog,” a tragedy set in opposition to the backdrop of actual property aspirations, was written briefly bursts over the span of 4 years whereas he sat in his parked automobile beside a graveyard. (It was a quiet house away from his child-filled home.)
Andre Dubus III, 64
Occupation: Writer
On constructing as an alternative of shopping for: “We begin doing the due diligence to purchase a home,” Mr. Dubus mentioned. “They have been simply too costly round right here. I had cash, however I didn’t need to spend each penny after which have a mortgage, which I wasn’t certain I might pay. I mentioned, ‘I’m a carpenter; perhaps I can construct one.’ We ended up shopping for these two acres. We needed to lower down 90 timber.”
In his highly effective 2011 memoir, “Townie,” Mr. Dubus detailed his years rising up with three siblings and a single mom in a sequence of Massachusetts mill cities. The household was poor and lived in a single rental property after one other. Mr. Dubus’s mother and father have been divorced; his father taught at a close-by school however, in these years, was a restricted presence in his son’s life.
Bullied as a teen, Mr. Dubus channeled his anger into weight lifting and, for a number of years after that, getting in fist fights — one thing at which he excelled and took a shameful pleasure.
By distinction, Mr. Dubus’s maturity has largely been a corrective to his traumatic youth — “a peaceable, bountiful, loving life,” he mentioned. He is the daddy of three grown kids, a husband, a writing professor on the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the creator of eight books.
Yet, as he made clear throughout an interview — and in a e-book of essays, “Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin,” printed final week — the “poor-people considering” that he absorbed in childhood — primarily that good issues are all the time past your attain — wasn’t simply shaken off.
It was solely with the success of “House of Sand and Fog,” his third e-book — an Oprah’s Book Club choose made right into a Hollywood film — that Mr. Dubus lastly had greater than $500 within the financial institution. At the time, he and his spouse, Fontaine, have been renting a “low cost little darkish half home” in close by Newburyport with their younger kids.
For years, the couple had cobbled collectively a residing as ravenous artists — she, as a contemporary dancer who gave classes and upholstered furnishings; he, as a self-employed carpenter, adjunct professor and aspiring author.
“There was a gap within the rest room flooring that dripped proper right down to the kitchen wall beneath,” Mr. Dubus recalled of their house. “My poor spouse was so depressed. But I grew up in locations like this; it was nothing new to me.”
With his windfall, Mr. Dubus needed solely to purchase the time to put in writing and browse all day. He didn’t take into account transferring to a nicer rental, not to mention shopping for a home. “A home? That’s for wealthy folks,” he mentioned, laughing at his perspective then.
Still, he might see how a lot Ms. Dubus needed a home, and he didn’t need to replicate the expertise he had rising up along with his personal kids. So when she discovered two acres on the market in a wooded space that was as soon as a farm, they purchased the land and launched into the odyssey of constructing this, their first dwelling. That was in 2002.
Having labored within the constructing trades along with his youthful brother, Jeb, Mr. Dubus determined the pair would oversee the development themselves, with the assistance of a employed crew. Framing occurred throughout a brutally frigid New England winter. Mr. Dubus was instructed to cowl the concrete basis with hay to maintain it from getting too chilly. That’s when he had an epiphany of kinds.
“As I’m breaking apart these hay bales on this miraculous two acres that we personal and spreading them over the concrete, I might really feel simply how essential it was to me to have a house,” he mentioned. “Didn’t understand it till that second.”
Indeed, as he writes in his new e-book, in an essay known as “Shelter,” apart from when his kids have been born, he had “by no means been happier than after I was constructing for us this home.”
As Mr. Dubus gave a tour, speaking animatedly whereas gripping a big tumbler of coffee, he nonetheless appeared home proud greater than 20 years later.
Jeb, a gifted carpenter, designed the home. Mr. Dubus’s directions to his brother illustrate simply how a lot his household’s previous formed the design. This was to not be a mere home, however a giant ship to hold and shelter his complete household and their goals. (And with its many porches and decks, the home does resemble an ocean liner.)
“We’d all the time lived in these tiny little flats,” Mr. Dubus mentioned. “You get a sturdy group of pals — what occurs? It can be 30 folks on this little kitchen. I mentioned, ‘Buddy, I don’t need any partitions. I need it vast open, so after I’m cooking for my pals we are able to all hang around.’”
He additionally needed every of his kids to have a bed room: “They have been sharing a room earlier than. My brother and I all the time shared a room rising up. And my sisters did.”
The fourth flooring can be a dance studio for Ms. Dubus. The floor flooring grew to become an in-law house. Mr. Dubus writes movingly in “Ghost Dogs” of his relationship along with his in-laws, George and Mary Dollas, who lived within the two-bedroom suite till they died. Last 12 months, Mr. Dubus’s mom, Patricia, moved in.
“She’s down there, 85 years outdated, proper now, as we converse,” he mentioned. “All my life, my mom was both going to pay the lease on time or eat. She was both going to place fuel within the automobile to get to work or we’re going to have groceries. None of them without delay. It provides me nice pleasure to have her in a brand new home.”
The dwelling has grow to be a gathering place not only for household, however for pals — “the party home,” he calls it. At Thanksgiving or Greek Easter (Ms. Dubus is Greek), everybody gathers within the open kitchen or across the large pine eating desk that Mr. Dubus constructed to seat 24 folks.
But regardless of the house’s sprawling dimension and the in depth want record that accompanied it, Mr. Dubus forgot one factor: a writing room for himself. So he ended up down within the boiler room.
Lately, his again has been bothering him, a consequence of years of zealously understanding, in addition to the author’s life. He can now not sit in his cave and work. Instead, he stands at a cluttered workbench beside the steep staircase — writing perched over a ledge.
Upstairs, there may very well be 20 folks in the home. But down right here, in his dream portal, Mr. Dubus can’t hear them. “This is it, child,” he mentioned. “I can solely hear my heartbeat and my breath.”
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