Reading
contemporary fiction has many rewards.
First, you get a
whopping good story.
Second, when the
writer knows their stuff, you feel it in your bones. This writer can write!
Third, you never
know when you might run across a mysterious malady that might be one that you
could have, really, personally. Alerted, you check it out.
Since Dufresne
obviously delights in the odd, let’s talk about Dupuytren’s Contracture. In “My
Darling Boy,” protagonist Olney Kartheizer mentions this malady of the hands as
he contemplates a character in a story he might write for an imaginary family.
I thought, “I
might have that.” As Johns Hopkins describes it on its web site:
Dupuytren contracture (also called
Dupuytren disease) is an abnormal thickening of the skin in the palm of your
hand at the base of your fingers. This thickened area may develop into a hard
lump or thick band. Over time, it can cause one or more fingers to curl
(contract) or pull sideways or in toward your palm. The ring and little fingers
are most commonly affected.
Hopkins includes a
video and photos. The contracture makes it hard to cut steak, hold hands with a
loved one, and write a thank-you note. People over 50 from a Northern European
background (it’s sometimes referred to as “Viking’s hand”) are the most
susceptible. I viewed the video and thought, “I definitely have that.” So I’m
calling my primary care physician to refer me to a hand doctor.
Dufresne is a
writer who does his research so it’s hard to imagine he just pulled this out of
thin air. There’s a reason to mention an infirmity that makes it hard to write
or type with all fingers. It’s hard to write, period.
After many novels,
story collections, and writers’ self-help books later, Dufresne has his craft well
in hand.
“My Darling Boy”
is funny as hell and it will break the heart of any parent. It broke mine.
Olney’s mission is
to rescue his son Cully from an opioid addiction. He might want to swim the
Atlantic Ocean or fly to the moon instead. If you have experience with addicted
children or any addicted loved ones, the first message you get at an Alanon
meeting is “you have to let them fail.” That comes from AA too. At some point,
there is nothing you can do that won’t take you down too. Tough love, I guess.
Olney won’t
listen. He may be made of sterner stuff (offspring of Vikings?) but he isn’t.
He loves Cully. Olney’s job at the Anastasia (Fla.) Daily Sun has been downsized
from staff writer to book reviewer to copy editor to obit writer and then out
the door. He is divorced and Kat, his wife, is remarried and in another town. He
is the Elwood P. Dowd of Anastasia, stopping to talk with strangers and
befriend them if possible. They become his cohorts in the search for Olney that
takes him through the underbelly of Florida. And if you don’t think Florida has
an underbelly, you ain’t looking out the window as you crisscross the state. Seedy
motels, junkies on street corners, abandoned mini-malls with weed-choked lots. Oh,
and street corner kiosks for time-shares. All there if you look. I always
looked for underbelly when I traveled across Wyoming. I found plenty (no
time-share kiosks in Rawlins though).
Dufresne has so
much fun noticing. Maybe that’s why his work is included in the “Miami Noir”
anthology (1 & 2) edited by Miami resident Les Standiford, a Ph.D. grad in
creative writing from UU and once a seasonal park ranger in the Beehive State. Dufresne
can be noir but he has so much fun with word play. The proprietor of a rundown
motel uses malapropisms which wordsmith Olney shows mercy and only occasionally corrects.
The names of his small towns are wonderful.
Melancholy is where his ex-wife lives and is the scene of much of the novel’s
second half. At book’s end, Olney and his pal Dewey are off to find Cully. They
come to a crossroads along one of those pine-straddled secondary roads. One way
takes them to Gracious and the other to Whynot. come to a crossroads for
Gracious and Whynot. Guess which one he takes?
Dufresne’s not
Southern-born but he got here as quick as he could. He teaches creative writing
at Miami’s Florida International University. He keeps company with Florida’s
riotous writers. He shares the pages in “Naked Came the Manatee” with
“Florida’s finest writers,” so says the New York Times Book Review. In it with
Dufresne are Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Edna Buchanan, Dave Barry, and
Carolina Hospital.
I read Dufresne
stories before I tackled this novel. Dufresne’s name often comes up with other
Southern Gothic fiction writers such as Lewis Nordan who grew up in Itta Bena,
Miss. I once worked with Nordan and, after hearing him speak to a group of
writers, realized I had to read all his books. He blends the tragic with the
hilarious which doesn’t seem possible until you read “Wolf Whistle,” a novel of
the notorious Emmett Till murder. Read it and see.
But first, Dufresne’s
“My Darling Boy.”
