The Novel Lie
John Dufresne’s new novel will make readers question literary labels

By Tina Koenig

In his new book, author John Dufresne blurs the lines between fiction and memoir

Requiem, Mass. (W.W. Norton, $24.95) is local author and creative writing professor, Dufresne’s seventh book. He calls it a “false memoir” or the fictionalized version of his childhood. The title’s clever wordplay is appropriated from the Catholic mass performed for remembrance. The word remembrance is a synonym for the French, memoir.

Requiem, Mass. is the fictional name of Worcester, Massachusetts, where Dufresne grew up. The story is about a son’s unconditional love for his parents; and the struggle to keep his family together within that crazier-than-thou community called Requiem, where no character is immune from the author’s wry humor. It is also a book about writing a book.

In the story, young Johnny Boy’s mother, Frances, believes her children are alien substitutes for her real kids. Dad is a pathological liar and long-haul truck driver maintaining a multi-family lifestyle. His sister, Audrey, can read her cat’s mind and follows the self-help secrets of one Dr. Valentine Bondurant.

Despite having a crazy mother and an absent father, Johnny Boy fights to prevent the bad girl nuns from taking him and Audrey away from their parents—not that it’s a bad idea, mind you. The story spans five years of Johnny Boy’s childhood but begins with the narrator’s present circumstance as “…I began to write my life.”

Dufresne’s latest book, Requiem, Mass.

In Requiem, Mass. there is just enough genuinely biographical information about the actual John Dufresne to lull the reader into believing that most of it’s true. For example, John Dufresne is a professor of fiction writing, and so is the book’s narrator. The author lives in Dania Beach, and the narrator, also named John, lives seemingly just down the street. Both are trying to tell a story about their childhood but can’t call it memoir because it’s embellished. As Dufresne reflected in an interview, “You’ve got to change it. You’ve got to elaborate. You’ve got to fill in the gaps in your memory. We don’t remember everything but you’re trying to be honest about how things happen.”

Even the narrator’s fictional sweetheart, Annick, processes the fiction vs. memoir debate. She alludes to the recent spate of fabricated memoirs and the perception that many novels are thinly veiled autobiography when she says: “If you call it memoir, no one will believe it. If you say it’s a novel, people will assume you’re writing about yourself.”

So what exactly is the reader getting in Requiem, Mass.?

It’s human nature to be curious. And when a reader examines a work of fiction that seems larger-than-life but still plausible in parts, they want to know what’s true and what isn’t. At least I did.

I invited the author to chat, and hoped he wouldn't cross his fingers behind his back while he answered a few questions.

Eschewing the noise of a frappuccino-whipping blender at Starbucks, we sat outside. The morning was sunny and cool for a change. There was a slight breeze and only the intermittent squeal of air from delivery truck brakes and ambulance sirens that added a faux urban ambience to an otherwise suburban roadside.

Within minutes of settling into a chair, Dufresne volunteered the answer to my most difficult question: No, his mother’s psychiatric condition was not like the character, Frances.

“She’s my mother squared,” Dufresne said. “My father is a chummy guy. Everybody loves him. My parents weren’t like the characters, but they were laissez-faire.”

At the tender age of seven, Dufresne was left to mind his three younger siblings while his parents “partied.” When he got older, he rode his bike into town or out to the local lake. There were close calls at the lake and downtown—places the author said, “I shouldn’t have been when I was seven, eight, nine years old. I’m lucky I turned out okay. I could easily have been a poster child for unfulfilled potential.”

I asked him what percentage of the book is true and got a puckish response.

Louis Lowy and Gabrielle Sua attend Dufresne’s writing group at FIU

“One percent,” he said, chasing the answer with a chuckle. His Massachusetts accent is a dead giveaway. He was born in Worcester, Mass. so that much in the title is the true, but it almost goes without saying: “I couldn’t call the book Worcester, Mass.”

Kidding aside, Dufresne is doing important work with this book. He’s trying to say something about emotional truth as opposed to simply laying out the facts as they happened. He’s thought about why people need to know if something really happened, and why other writers lie about what really happened.

“Memoir is fiction about the author,” Dufresne said. “As soon as you begin writing scenes about the past, you fictionalize it because you can’t remember it all because memory doesn’t work that way. You remember what you remember as the gist of something. You don’t remember small talk, etc. You don’t want small talk in a novel anyway. You are trying to get at the truth, but there is a level of embellishment. How far can you embellish before the gist becomes a lie?

“For the reader,” he said, “I think it’s…so here’s this guy, he went to hell and back, and he came out of it, and he’s making a gazillion dollars. So I can change my life. The appeal to a writer might be egotistical. I can get people to believe my version of the truth, not as the person I was, but as the person I want to have been: this person who had these great struggles—heroic.”

In addition to his full-time position as a professor of creative writing at Florida International University, Dufresne writes every morning and reads as many as 10 books at a time.

“When I attended undergraduate school everyone was so well-read. I felt like I was behind. I still do.”

At 60, he keeps in shape by walking six miles several times a week near the ocean in Dania Beach where he lives with his wife, Cindy, and their son when he’s home from college. When he walks, he reads. He keeps a book with him at all times.

“People always ask me how I walk and read. I tell them I’ve walked into the bushes a few times, but so far I haven’t smashed into any light poles.”

Lillian Martin and David Gonzalez, who attend John Dufresne’s Friday Night Writers group

A habitual multi-tasker, Dufresne juggles half a dozen writing projects simultaneously. In June, he submitted the manuscript for a book on novel writing titled Is Life Like This? It’s due out in 2009. He is co-writing a play called Salesman with Donald Papy that’s based on a documentary film by Albert and David Maysles. Dufresne and Papy also collaborated on the screenplay for the film To Live and Die in Dixie, which debuts this summer. He has short stories and articles promised to various magazines and literary journals; and he has notes for a new novel accumulating in a folder.

“Writing is a great thing to do even if you’re not going to make a living at it,” he said. “It’s a way to understand yourself and to understand the world.”

Despite his full schedule, Dufresne still moderates a free writing workshop every other Friday night that coincides with the university’s fall and spring semesters. He’s been at the helm of the Friday Night Writers group for 18 years and says he continues because it’s a way of giving back.

“Part of it is that people helped me along the way, but I enjoy the fellowship and the reading. And I’m always learning what works and what doesn’t work.”

Many up-and-coming writers profit from Dufresne’s advice and generosity. Louis Lowy, 54, travels 40 minutes from Miami Lakes to attend the group. He has been attending for a year and recently had his first piece published in Coral Living Magazine. In April, he learned that he was accepted into FIU’s graduate MFA program in creative writing.

“This group is a fantastic opportunity to be with other writers and to get critical feedback, and to share your enthusiasm and passion for writing with someone like John,” Lowy said.

When asked about advice for unpublished writers Dufresne commented, “Learn how to finish. If something gets rejected, keep writing. Rejection is hard. Get an agent as soon as you can, and let them handle the business side of things. Your job is to write.”

John Dufresne will be on tour this summer promoting his new book, a tour which includes a stop in the real Requiem/Worcester, Mass. He said he’s a little nervous about reading there, but he changed things enough in the novel that nobody will mind. There’s another town though, and a story about a job interview.

“I won’t be able to go back to that town.”

John Dufresne will read from his new book Tuesday, July 22, 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 2051 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale, and Wednesday, July 23, 8 p.m., at Books and Books, 265 Aragon Ave. in Coral Gables.

John Dufresne’s Friday Night Writers meets Friday nights during the fall and spring semesters at the Biscayne Boulevard Campus at Florida International University. For more information or to join the Friday Night Writers, e-mail fridaynightwriters@netzero.net.

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