Duberstein, Larry 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born May 18, 1944, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Wilbur (an attorney) and Irene (a teacher) Duberstein; "companion-in-life," Lee Brown (an attorney); children: Jamie, Nell, Annie. Education: Wesleyan University, B.A., 1966; Harvard University, M.A., 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Hancock, NH.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, carpenter, and cabinetmaker, 1971—. Affiliated with Darkhorse Builders, Squarehorse Builders, Brimstone Corner Builders, and Clark & Duberstein.

AWARDS, HONORS:

New American Writing Award, 1988, for Carnovsky's Retreat, and 1992, for Postcards from Pinsk; First Fiction Award nomination, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and New & Noteworthy paperback, New York Times, 1998, both for The Marriage Hearse; New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1998, for The Handsome Sailor; BookSense Notable Book of the Year, 2007, for The Day the Bozarts Died.

WRITINGS:

Nobody's Jaw (stories), Darkhorse Bookmakers (Cambridge, MA), 1979.

Eccentric Circles (stories), Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1992.

NOVELS

The Marriage Hearse, illustrated by Dorothy Ahle, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1987.

Carnovsky's Retreat, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1988.

Postcards from Pinsk, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1991.

The Alibi Breakfast, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1995.

The Handsome Sailor, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1998.

The Mt. Monadnock Blues, Permanent Press (New York, NY), 2003.

The Day the Bozarts Died, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Boston Phoenix, Saturday Review, Boston Review, and National.

SIDELIGHTS:

Larry Duberstein employs a male point of view in his novels The Marriage Hearse, Carnovsky's Retreat, and Postcards from Pinsk. Often his works focus on complex situations in his middle-aged character's lives: in Postcards from Pinsk a psychiatrist cannot cope with his recent divorce; in Carnovsky's Retreat a beer distributor suddenly abandons his old life and creates a new one for himself; and in The Marriage Hearse a philanderer chronicles an evening of his life and reveals his relationships with his wife, his former wife, his lover, and his three children.

Writer Maurice Locksley, the protagonist of The Marriage Hearse, returns in The Alibi Breakfast. Creeping into middle age, the wordplay-loving Locksley finds himself suffering writer's block and a looming midlife crisis. During a particularly miserable summer at his inlaw's vacation house in the Poconos, Locksley struggles with his own writing as his twelve-year-old son Ben pens a novel of his own. Daughter Sadie has brought home her boyfriend from Paris. Watching his older son Will fall in love with a beautiful local girl also underscores his own acute loneliness as his wife, a noted poet, might be pursuing an affair in California. Gathering his wits and energy, he decides to build a cabin in a local meadow and use it as a retreat, where he will increase his productivity, reinvigorate his career, and polish his self-esteem. Soon, however, hard choices and well-kept secrets will rattle his world even further. New York Times Book Review critic Suzanne Bernes remarked that fans of Duberstein's earlier comic works will be "delighted with the return of Locksley in all his self-conscious verbosity as he rattles cheerfully through marital woes and a midlife crisis." A Publishers Weekly reviewer named the book a "tender, healing story of renewal and emotional growth."

In The Handsome Sailor, Duberstein assembles a fictional reconstruction of the life of Herman Melville after the publication of the classic Moby Dick. During his lifetime, Melville enjoyed considerable success as a writer, with his books earning him financial and critical reward. Moby Dick, however, was a relative failure in its time; after an initial spate of good sales, the novel was battered by critics and sales dropped off dramatically. Duberstein's novel focuses primarily on Melville's life during 1882, when he was feeling the pressure of literary misfortune, working as a customs inspector in New York City, experiencing marital dissatisfaction with wife Elizabeth, and engaging in a brief affair with a colleague named Cora. Duberstein's "finely told novel fictionalizes the life of one of America's most important literary figures," commented Brian McCombie in World and I. Melville's "daily life, and the New York of this period, are summoned in lyrical detail," commented Jay Parini in the New York Times Book Review. Duberstein's story, McCombie concluded, "again breathes life into Herman Melville, creating a complex and touching character frequently at odds with himself, his art, and his times."

Tragedy strikes the life of Tim Bannon, a gay, forty-something travel agent and protagonist of The Mt. Monadnock Blues. When his sister and brother-in-law are killed in a car accident, the police bring him his niece Cindy and nephew Billy. Per his sister's wishes and his agreement, he becomes their guardian. The new family unit they create is a loving one, and the children thrive under their uncle's care. Still, others are not happy with the idea of a gay man raising children, and trouble arises when Tim's scatterbrained sister Erica and her homophobic, redneck husband Earl mount a legal challenge to his fitness as a surrogate parent and caretaker, solely because he is gay. Further complications arise when Tim is outed to his elderly mother, who had previously not known about his sexual orientation. Angered and hurt, Tim takes the legal route and fights back in the only way he knows how. Booklist reviewer Whitney Scott called the book a "stirring examination of notions of community, parenting, and caring," while a Publishers Weekly contributor observed that "Duberstein's scenes are often poignant and funny." Lambda Book Report reviewer Jim Gladstone commented favorably on Duberstein's "fine sense of pacing and his storytelling skills," further noting that the novel's scenes of "emotional recovery are indelible in their sensitivity and charm."

The Day the Bozarts Died, concerns protagonist Stanley Noseworthy, a playwright and the last tenant of a once-elite but now fading artistic cooperative housed at the famed Hotel des Beaux-Arts, or the Bozarts, in Canterbury, Massachusetts. Also known as the Blaisdell Street Artists Cooperative, the Bozarts building "has been a living monument to the rise and fall of the liberal-arts ideal in the U.S. in the latter part of the twentieth century," commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor. As the hotel's last tenant, Noseworthy struggles to sustain the relevance of the idea behind the artists' cooperative while also fighting to retain control of the place he has come to accept as his home. When new tenant Rose Gately arrives, Stanley's sexual addiction switches into high and he sets out to make her his newest lover. Rose's attentions, however, are focused on sculptor Arnold Clapperberg. Tragedy strikes Stanley when his mother dies, but instead of using his inheritance to find new quarters, he instead lets it serve as a war chest in his fight to retain the Bozarts and keep the Canterbury Institute of Technology, the original owner, from reclaiming the building. His efforts lead to a series of articles in the local paper, recounting the cooperative's history and detailing a perspective on the Bozarts that is sometimes at odds with Stanley's own self-serving one. Duberstein's work offers readers an "entertaining tableaux of fractious minor artists" who are "trying do their work while managing the demands of conventional life," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 2003, Whitney Scott, review of The Mt. Monadnock Blues, p. 478.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2003, review of The Mt. Monadnock Blues, p. 1088; September 1, 2006, review of The Day the Bozarts Died, p. 862.

Lambda Book Report, February 1, 2004, Jim Gladstone, review of The Mt. Monadnock Blues, p. 14.

Library Journal, November 1, 1992, Rebecca S. Kelm, review of Eccentric Circles, p. 120; July 1, 1996, review of The Alibi Breakfast, p. 196; March 1, 1998, Robin Nesbitt, review of The Handsome Sailor, p. 126.

New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1987, C.D.B. Bryan, review of The Marriage Hearse, p. 12; May 28, 1995, Suzanne Berne, review of The Alibi Breakfast, p. 12; June 28, 1998, Jay Parini, review of The Handsome Sailor, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, September 21, 1992, review of Eccentric Circles, p. 74; February 27, 1995, review of The Alibi Breakfast, p. 85; March 16, 1998, review of The Handsome Sailor, p. 53; October 13, 2003, review of The Mt. Monadnock Blues, p. 56; August 21, 2006, review of The Day the Bozarts Died, p. 52.

World and I, November 1, 1998, Brian McCombie, review of The Handsome Sailor, p. 287.