Andrews, Tom 1961-2001

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ANDREWS, Tom 1961-2001

PERSONAL: Born April 30, 1961, in Charleston, WV; died of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, July 18, 2001; son of Howard Raymond (an attorney) and Alice Ann (a medical worker and volunteer; maiden name, Roush) Andrews; married Carrie Garlinghouse, 1983 (divorced, 1993). Education: Hope College, B.A., 1984; University of Virginia, M.F.A., 1987; attended Institute of European Studies (Vienna, Austria), 1983; attended Oberlin College, 1984. Politics: "Left of center." Religion: Christian.

CAREER: University of Virginia, Charlottesville, teaching fellow in poetry writing, 1986–87; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, lecturer in creative writing, 1987–88; Ohio University, Athens, assistant professor of English, 1991–96; Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, professor of creative writing. Graduate instructor in creative writing, Warren Wilson University. Copy editor for Mathematical Reviews, 1987–90.

MEMBER: Phi Betta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Academy of American Poets Award from Oberlin College, 1984; Henry Hoyns fellowship from University of Virginia, 1985–86; The Brother's Country won the National Poetry Series Open Competition, 1989; Iowa Poetry Prize from University of Iowa Press, 1993, for The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1993; Rome fellowship in literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999–2000; Guggenheim fellowship, 2001–02.

WRITINGS:

Hymning the Kanawha (poetry), Haw River Books, Ltd., 1989.

The Brother's Country (poetry), Persea Books (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1993.

The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle (poetry), University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1994.

(Editor) The Point Where All Things Meet: Essays on Charles Wright, Oberlin College Press (Oberlin, OH), 1995.

Codeine Diary: A Memoir, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998, published as Codeine Diary: True Confessions of a Reckless Hemophiliac, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1999.

Random Symmetries: The Collected Poems of Tom Andrews, Oberlin College Press (Oberlin, OH), 2002.

Contributor of poetry and articles to anthologies, including A While Longer before the Cold, Hope College, 1990; My Poor Elephant: 27 Male Writers at Work, Longstreet Press (Atlanta, GA), 1992; The Best American Poetry 1994, Scribner (New York, NY), 1994; and The Art and Craft of Poetry, Writer's Digest Books (Cincinnati, OH), 1994. Also contributor of poems, articles, and reviews to periodicals, including Harper's, Paris Review, Journal, Poetry East, Field, Sycamore Review, Witness, Crazy River, Poetry, Westminster Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ironwood, Timbuktu, William and Mary Review, Antioch Review, Missouri Review, Passages North, Wallace Stevens Journal, Wind Literary Journal, Ohio Journal, AWP Chronicle, Tar River Poetry, and Iron Mountain Review. Editor, with others, of "Field Poetry Series," Oberlin College Press.

SIDELIGHTS: Tom Andrews was a professor and author whose life was shaped by a rare blood disorder, hemophilia. His struggles with the disease, and his brother's early death from kidney malfunction, provided much of the gist for his writing. The title poem of The Brother's Country is an elegy for the brother who died, and, according to a Virginia Quarterly Review critic, it "display[s] clearly Andrews's gift for directly confronting painful personal issues and transforming them into vivid language." The reviewer concluded that The Brother's Country "richly repays numerous rereadings."

As a young person, Andrews refused to give up many activities that might have seemed ill-advised, in light of his bleeding disorder. In 1974, for example, he was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for breaking the world record for continuous handclapping. The fourteen-and-a-half hours he spent clapping his hands to earn the listing might well have caused some serious bruising or bleeding for him. The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle takes its title from Andrews's dedication to the fun of motocross racing, even though an accident in the sport might have caused him to bleed to death. Michael Chitwood, reviewing the volume in the Charlotte Observer lauded Andrews as "a writer who's funny and serious, musical and thoughtful, all at the same time." A Publishers Weekly critic had high praise for The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle as well, noting that "this is delicate writing" and that the author's "voice considers the shadow world of death and retrieves mercy and the mystery of life."

In 1988, Andrews published Codeine Diary: A Memoir, a book derived from a journal Andrews kept after being injured and heavily medicated, following a fall on the ice in 1989. He reflects on his life and especially his parents, and the ways they coped with having two children who suffered from serious diseases. "In this tour of a destructive illness, there is wit, humor, no self pity, just a lesson in how to survive and triumph," mused Yvonne Crittenden in a Toronto Sun review. Entertainment Weekly writer Margot Mifflin found the book a "funny, feisty" recollection that is, for the most part, also "dignified," but marred by too many allusions to other writers' work. A Publishers Weekly writer found that Codeine Diary is "sometimes undermined by a lack of focus," but concluded that overall, the author proved himself "adept at expressive phrases and insightful observations." Dixie Jones concluded in Library Journal: "He stirs the reader's emotions as he bares his own."

Andrews explained in an essay in Eve Shelnutt's My Poor Elephant: 27 Male Writers at Work that he at first attended Hope College with the aim of becoming a minister. He was inclined toward writing, as well, but intended to use his talents as a Christian apologist. "I was, however, in big trouble," he confessed. "Secretly … I loved comic writers such as S. J. Perelman and Woody Allen…. The only reconciliation I would consider was to try in my stories and plays to lure readers with wildness and humor only to drive home the fact of the Incarnation, the bad faith of which didn't occur to me." Eventually Andrews came to embrace a more secular philosophy of writing, and abandoned the ministry for poetry and criticism.

Andrews once told CA: "Much of my work has been written in a spirit of agreement with Virginia Woolf's observation: 'Considering how common illness is, it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place … among the prime themes of literature.' Hemophilia—and my brother's experience with (and eventual death due to) kidney disease—introduced me early on to certain inviolable mysteries: the body's fragility and tenacity and sheer strangeness, the absurd immediacy of death, the richness of our interior lives, the need to establish connections with circles of meaning greater than ourselves, and to surrender to them. During illness, daily life is seen for what it is: a puzzling miracle. During convalescence, one is in touch, as perhaps never before, with the instinct to praise, to articulate the need to be inhabited by existence. That need is startling and impersonal; as Friedrich Nietzsche put it, one 'is now all at once attacked by hope … the intoxication of convalescence … after long privation and powerlessness.'" He concluded: "In my work I hope to participate in that intoxication—while at the same time remaining faithful to the conditions that bring about such a fierce need for it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Andrews, Tom, Codeine Diary: A Memoir, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998.

Shelnutt, Eve, editor, My Poor Elephant: 27 Male Writers at Work, Longstreet Press (Atlanta, GA), 1992, pp. 393-402.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, fall, 1995, John Kennedy, review of On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things, p. 496.

Booklist, January 1, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Codeine Diary, p. 748.

Charlotte Observer, April 3, 1994, Michael Chitwood, review of The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle.

Entertainment Weekly, February 6, 1998, Margot Mifflin, review of Codeine Diary, p. 56.

Library Journal, January, 1998, Dixie Jones, review of Codeine Diary, p. 126.

Publishers Weekly, March 30, 1990, Peggy Kaganoff, review of The Brother's Country, p. 56; March 28, 1994, review of The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle, p. 90; January 12, 1998, review of Codeine Diary, p. 53.

Rocky Mountain News, March 22, 1998, review of Codeine Diary, p. E3.

Toronto Sun, March 22, 1998, Yvonne Crittenden, review of Codeine Diary.

Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1991, review of The Brother's Country.