Author Warns Against Trivializing Life

Writer Nicholas F. DelBanco '63 told a Winthrop House audience last night of the danger of trivializing life in fiction.

As part of the Winthrop House Literary Series, DelBanco read his soon-to-be-published short story "The Writer's Trade," about Mark Fusco, a young author riding on a train that runs over a woman's body. The event leads to the protagonist's realization that his ambition to write great fiction can trivialize the very situations he depicts in his work.

"Fusco begins to learn that it is not all just grist for the mill," said DelBanco. He said the story grapples with the question of "how to live a life alone when urged by a secular power to succeed."

DelBanco's story tracks Fusco in the year following his Harvard graduation, from the publication of his acclaimed first novel to an understanding of the nature of his success. Fusco leaves his hometown sweetheart for a sophisticated New Yorker and plans to write his next book about it. But he concludes the book would debase the relationships.

The story is not an autobiographical work, DelBanco said. But he added, "A certain amount of the story has a basis in truth."

And he said the name for his protagonist comes "from a sign advertising a bricklayer." He said he had not heard of the former Harvard hockey star and Hobie Baker award-winner Mark E. Fusco '83.

Following the reading, DelBanco discussed with the audience the process of writing and rewriting the story. "I spent less time on the blithe action of construction than on the bilious act of reconstruction," the author said.

The literary series, in its first year, brings writers of different disciplines to the house library to discuss their profession, said writer and Winthrop House librarian Maureen Foley.

"We wanted to expand the uses of the library and the meaning of letters in the house," Foley said, adding that the program has already attracted Michael Walsh, music critic for Time magazine and New York novelist James Atlas. She said she hopes to "have more fiction writers in the fall, mostly writers from the Boston area."