When he phones to tell his dad that Suzanne has been raped, he feels "this dark joy spreading through my chest at having just done that to him, the one who should have been here all along, the one who should never have left us in the first place."ĭubus’ backward vision of his mother, Patricia, is more universally flattering, especially with regard to her mettle while facing single motherhood and poverty.
Although it's ultimately a loving representation of his father, the younger Dubus doesn't flinch when describing his frequent frustration with, and even rage at, his dad. Townie serves as a sort of singed valentine to the elder Dubus (he died in 1999), who's depicted as a complex, loving man who couldn't fully commit to anything but his literary work. Dubus describes living next door to the Vonneguts: "The father, Kurt, would walk down to our house every afternoon and sit with us four kids in the living room and watch Batman on the small black-and-white." During the same period when he was brawling in the riverfront alleyways, though, Dubus was surrounded by his parents' artsy, literary friends, and their sensibilities seeped into him as if by osmosis.
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