Love Warps the Mind a Little by John Dufresne

From the Publisher

Ever since Lafayette Proulx quit his day job, left his wife, hauled his dog and his Royal portable across town to Judi Dubey's house, and set out at last to be a fiction writer, his life has been a sordid mess. Judi's exotically dysfunctional family isn't all to blame. Sure, the murders are disconcerting. And, yes, Judi's father's gone off the deep end. Worse are the vicious rejection letters Laf gets from editors. To top it off, Laf's falling for Judi at the same time he's nettled with guilt, is in marriage counseling with his wife, and is writing his long-hoped-for novel. When Judi is diagnosed with stage IV cancer, they both struggle to find the memory that will comfort, the truth that will redeem in a world where everyone suffers some kind of love disorder. John Dufresne, called "a highly readable Faulkner," will once again take the literary world by storm with this new tragicomic tale.

Publishers Weekly

A wizard's brew of broad humor and genuine tragedy marks Dufresne's second novel, as it did his acclaimed first (Louisiana Power & Light, 1994). Narrator Lafyette (Laf) Proulx is a world-class schlemiel. Approaching 40, he knows only one thing-that he wants to write. So he quits his job as a high-school teacher, leaves his wife and moves in with his mistress, taking with him only his dog and his typewriter. Dufresne has a ball with Laf's literary follies, especially the rejection letters from journals like Pond Apple and Incomplete Flower ("We publish writing that counts, friend, that redefines and reshapes the world"). He also goes to town with Laf's manic brainstorming for story ideas-one of which, a tale of middle-aged lovers, evolves into an effective mirror of Laf's own personal development. Events turn serious when Laf's mistress, whose family is a marvel of violent and violently funny dysfunctionality, discovers she has cancer. Laf is thrust into the role of caretaker, a job for which he seems eminently unsuited. The novel never quite reaches the tragicomic heights of its predecessor, and in making Laf see the world through the lens of his literary ambition (or pretension), Dufresne has to ward off a certain parochial preciousness. But for all that, he weaves a powerful spell, proving himself once again a writer of great energy and a big, open heart. Major ad/ promo; author tour.(Jan.)

Library Journal

Bad memories for Dufresne, who won praise for Louisiana Power and Light (LJ 6/1/94)? Here, an aspiring novelist drops out of one life to write and into another that proves a lot messier than expected.

Karen Karbo

A funny, wise and powerful novel. -- Karen Karbo, New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

The ever-colorful, mercurial Dufresne follows his acclaimed debut novel, Louisianan Power and Light (1994), with a finely balanced tale about how love's baffling turns both complicate and enrich the midlife of a struggling writer.

Lafayette (Laf) Proulx gives up teaching high school in Worcester, Massachusetts, to write, a breach of security for which his milquetoast wife Martha never forgives him—so he leaves her, too, taking his dog with him. Moving in with Judi, a therapist he'd already been having an affair with, he discovers with a shock that he was more welcome as a married man, but he sets up his typewriter and bangs away anyway, ignoring Judi's ambivalence and making the best of the steady stream of rejection slips he receives from literary magazines. He takes an interest in Judi's stories of her past incarnations, and in her pill-popping, trailer-trash family, even when a sister's slaughterhouse boyfriend murders her ex-con husband. The storytelling possibilities of his new life, however, are suddenly arrested, first when he develops writer's block, then when Judi is diagnosed with uterine cancer. As a hysterectomy followed by chemotherapy fails to halt the cancer's spread, Laf helplessly watches his lover waste away before he and she had really had a chance to give their relationship a solid footing. A New Age therapist gives Judi a clearer understanding of her connection to Laf through the centuries, helping her to reconcile herself to her imminent death. Through pain and revelation, Laf stands by her, giving selflessly, and when she's gone, he discovers that he's gained something vital in return.

Strong, quirky characters coping honestly with life's misfortune make this a quiet success. Dufresne has written a funny, profoundly accomplished saga of love and loss.

Product Details

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Read a Sample Chapter

Chapter One

Love Without Its Wings

The day I finished my best story yet—about a social worker whose child gets Lyme disease, slips into a coma, suffers brain damage, becomes a burden to his father—after I typed it, retyped it, and mailed it off to the Timber Wolf Review, my wife, Martha, came home from work and, just like that, asked me to leave our apartment forever. What's with you? I said, as if I didn't know. She packed my green plaid suitcase, threw toiletries in an overnight bag, and set it all by the kitchen door.

A month earlier, Martha and I had gone on a couples retreat with some other folks from the parish out at the Trappist monastery in Spencer. The idea of the weekend was to reinvigorate your marriage, renew your vows, and rededicate your life to Jesus. I should tell you I'm not a religious person, and I was more than a little skeptical about the efficacy of this therapeutic undertaking. I doubted that a gang of cloistered celibates would have much to offer us struggling spouses other than the customary Pauline counsel. But then we all got to sharing our feelings so openly, talking about our hopes and fears, and we got so honest and nonjudgmental and everything, and the truth is such a dangerous drug and all, and I was feeling splendid, feeling like the world was pure, refreshing, like some god had created it with humor and generosity, that I was regrettably moved to reveal to Martha the unpleasant truth of my infidelity. I told her about Judi Dubey. But I said, Martha, I'm finished with all that, I promise. That last part was a lie, it turns out.

So as I stood there in thekitchen, my back to the door, hand on my suitcase, I could see that my disclosure had been festering inside Martha all these weeks and had turned her hateful. I told her I loved her. She jabbed me in the stomach with my typewriter. You don't know what love is, she told me, which is probably true. I mean, who does? I asked if we could talk about this. I said, Forgiveness is divine, isn't it? She said, You got what you wanted. Which was also probably true, though I didn't understand it then. I took my last look around the kitchen, trying to secure the details: the cast iron skillet on the stove, the yellow dish towel folded over the handle on the oven door, the crucifix, the wall calendar from Moore's Pharmacy. I knew they'd all wind up in a story some day. A guy like me, who had just given up a career in order to write stories, would be the central character. A story about love and anxiety.

Martha told me to take the goddamn dog and get the hell out. Spot heard the jingle of his leash and came blasting into the kitchen from the parlor and slid right past me into the door. He started barking. I cuffed him one.

Martha shook her head, called me pathetic. "You're thirty-six years old. You're working part-time in a fish-and-chips store, and you're breaking my heart."

Sure, the job thing again. I said, "Martha, you knew I was a writer when you married me."

She laughed. "You haven't published a damn thing in your life.

I said, "Neither did Emily Dickinson."

Spot grabbed his leash and tugged. I told Martha we should talk about this.

She pulled a book of matches from the El Morocco out of her pocket. "Found them in your shirt this morning."

I don't smoke. I lied and said my friend Francis X. had asked me to hold them for him.

"Your shirt smelled like that slut."

When I think about that afternoon now, I wonder if I had acted purposefully, if, in fact, I wanted to get caught, wanted to hurt Martha so badly that she would never take me back. At the time; I imagined I was acting spontaneously, if recklessly, a slave to my late-blooming libido. But infidelity, as you know, is anything but spontaneous. You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and the sex must be as bright as the future you gamble. Was I no longer in love with Martha? Had I allowed her to become a stranger? If I sound disingenuous, I don't mean to.

"We'll talk about this when you've calmed down," I said. "In the meantime, what about my mail?"

"I'll forward it to you."

I gave her Judi Dubey's address, but not her name.