Three Flies Up - My Father, Baseball and Me

Three Flies Up – My Father, Baseball and Me
Author: Kelley Dupuis
ISBN: 978-1-4327-2155-8
Publisher: Outskirts Press, Inc.
Genre and Target Market: biography; father/son relationships; baseball
Publication Date: 2008
Book Length in Pages: 382
Reviewer: Sarah Moore

There certainly is no shortage of stories that have been told about the difficult dynamics of the father/son relationship. The struggle for independence and manhood, generational differences in career expectations and the battle for respect have been put on full display for centuries. Amidst the emotional issues, it is not unusual to find the sport of baseball as an essential element woven into the American father and son story. The autobiography Three Flies Up, the third book written by author Kelley Dupuis, certainly contains all of these expected components. But, this autobiography is far from the formulaic tale of familial strife and reconciliation.

We are introduced to Dupuis’ entire family throughout the course of the book, including a troubled younger sister who suffered an untimely death and a mother who maintained a positive outlook despite a difficult marriage. We also get to know the cast of characters who worked with Dupuis over the years, most memorable being those who managed to irritate the author in some capacity. Dupuis’ world travels as an employee with the State Department and contentious relationships with domestic bosses are detailed with humor. His career successes and setbacks certainly do provide a backdrop in Three Flies Up, and create the circumstances for family interactions. However, the heart of this autobiography comes from the relationship between the author and his father, Joseph Ellis Dupuis.

Dupuis explains his father’s selfish behavior in a way that makes the reader uncomfortable, if not downright angry. How is one supposed to react to a man who tells his son on his tenth birthday that he is one-sixth of his way to death or who bullied his kids as payback to some assumed wrong from his wife? Joseph Dupuis was a man who found derogatory comments to make about minority groups, focused on the negative aspects of every situation and resented any moment at which he was not receiving everyone’s full attention (even at his own wife’s funeral). But, Dupuis also creates compassion for the fragility of his father’s personality. He was a man who showed quiet moments of tenderness when singing to his son’s elderly cat or caring for his tomatoes every year in his small garden. He cried out to his son as he lay in a hospital bed and realized that dementia was overtaking him, “I used to be a man!” To imagine those words coming from my own (very complex) father made for a very painful moment of reading.

There are moments in Three Flies Up that are absolutely gut-wrenching. Anyone who has struggled with the ravaging effects of dementia, particularly with a parent, will undoubtedly relate to Kelley Dupuis’ writing. As the primary caregiver for the last year of his life, Dupuis fed, changed, and guided a father who was slipping deeper into a world of confusion and anger. He writes about his father’s return to a childlike dependence with tenderness and honesty. When the author writes about his need to escape to the kitchen just to cry and mourn the person his dad had become, you cannot help but find yourself connected to the author.

Despite a troubled relationship that at one point led to five years of estrangement, the author and his father had one interest that allowed them to speak a common language—baseball (particularly the San Diego Padres). When every other discussion had reached an impasse, the question, “What time is the game on?” could reunite the two for a common cause. Mr. Dupuis uses each baseball season and its victors as a way of marking the passage of time in this book. Interspersed with funerals, love affairs and family fights are recollections of batting statistics, lousy trades, and the annual fate of those “good boys” from the Padres. While two pages abruptly detailing the pitch count in the seventh inning of a Padres game may seem superfluous to some, anyone who finds a connection with sports and their life lessons will appreciate the perfect symbiosis.

Three Flies Up was my introduction to Kelley Dupuis’ writing and I will be making it a point to read his two previously published books. While I will never be a father or a son, I could understand the relationships detailed in this autobiography. Don’t we all have some point of remorse or resentment with our parents? How many of us embrace those elements that strengthen sometimes the shaky bonds with our family? Aren’t our close relationships often the most complicated ones? I encourage you to learn more about Kelley Dupuis and his father by reading Three Flies Up and then, if you can, join your own dad at the ballpark for a couple of beers and some cheering for the home team.

Baseball & Father/Son Relationships Book

Kelley Dupuis will be joining us today on Writers in the Sky Podcast July 18th, 2008!

Kelley Dupuis was born in Vermont and grew up in California, where he attended San Diego State University, graduating with a degree in journalism and history. After a few years in newspaper and radio work, he joined the U.S. State Department and traveled about the world. Later he returned to journalism, winning a San Diego Press Club award for investigative reporting in 2004. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., where he works as a writer and editor. He and his wife Valerie, a real estate broker, have three dogs, three cats and no children.

Click here to listen to Part 1...

In Three Flies Up, Washington, D.C. author and award-winning journalist Kelley Dupuis explores two themes, one universal and one uniquely American. The perennial theme of fathers and sons forms the backdrop for the story of the author’s long, usually-troubled relationship with his own father, a career Border Patrolman who grew up both poor and largely without a father in his own life, and as a result had no role model for being a father himself. As the author grows up in the 1960s and ‘70s, father and son are at loggerheads more than often than not.

Click here to listen to Part 2...

But they share one very important, very American thing: a mutual love for the game of baseball, one of few things capable of bridging the cultural, generational and emotional gap separating father and son. Baseball is their chief, often only, common ground. When the author is in his late forties, after years of estrangement from his father and following his mother’s death, he returns home to California to assist in caring for his dad, now approaching 90 and gradually falling victim to dementia. Eventually, when the author becomes his father’s primary caregiver, baseball is more important than ever.

For more information please visit http://www.kelleydupuis.com/

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Listening to Writers in the Sky Podcast on a computer is easy. Just click this link: http://yvonneperry.blogspot.com/ and go to my blog.On the right sidebar there is a list of archived shows. Click on the interview you would like to hear and it will open a post that has a link to the audio file.

For information about being a guest on Writers in the Sky Podcast, see http://www.yvonneperry.net/Writing_Packages.htm#Publicity_Packages_

Writing Podcast Schedule July 2008

WITS Podcast Schedule July 2008. Authors interviewed this month include: 

July 11
Dawn Menge has a master’s degree and clear credential in special education. She has worked with the severely handicapped population for eleven years. She combines imagination with practical skills to make learning fun in the characters and kingdom of her Queen Vernita series of children’s books. Queen Vernita's Visitors takes place in the land of Oceaneers, and is a story woven around Dawn's 87-year-old grandmother and other family members, which include her parents, children, grandchild, nieces, nephews, and childhood friend. Some of these characters will be visiting during the interview with Sarah Moore.

July 18
Kelley Dupuis will be interviewed by Sarah Moore regarding the writing, publishing, and marketing of his recently-published book, Three Flies Up: My Father, Baseball and Me.
In Three Flies Up, Washington, D.C. author and award-winning journalist Kelley Dupuis explores two themes: one universal and one uniquely American. The perennial theme of fathers and sons forms the backdrop for the story of the author’s long, usually-troubled relationship with his own father, a career Border Patrolman who grew up both poor and largely without a father in his own life, and as a result had no role model for being a father himself. As the author grows up in the 1960s and 1970s, father and son are at logger-heads more than often than not. Read more or purchase at http://tinyurl.com/3rppl7.

July 25
Bridget Lenox, author of Beyond the Border, will be interviewed by Sarah Moore. In 1979, four of the toughest boys in town vomit and weep when they stumble across Border Patrol agents who covertly exterminated caged, illegal aliens with kerosene and a single cigarette. Later, as adults, two of the boys discover that the same practices still secretly exist and are sanctioned by both the State and Federal authorities to further political careers. Beyond the Border is a story about an attorney, Mike Phillips, fighting for the rights of illegal aliens—unknowingly and feloniously aided by a Columbian ally—but undermined by a staircase of politicians and political platforms that escalates to the Presidency and the future Presidency. ISBN: 9781598009217. Read more at www.outskirtspress.com/beyondtheborder and www.beyondtheborderbook.com.