Bruce Duffy, Hailed for His Ambitious First Novel, Dies at 70

Throughout a category on Tolstoy and D.H. Lawrence, she recalled in a cellphone interview, “Right here was this 6-foot-6 man, sitting within the entrance row, sneering at me, rolling his eyes and making faces. I had by no means seen something prefer it. I had him come to my workplace, and I requested, ‘How would you train this class?’ He had no thought. He solely wished consideration, and he advised me what he was writing.”

After graduating, Mr. Duffy turned a safety guard on the Hospital for Sick Youngsters (now the HSC Pediatric Middle) in Washington. He introduced a typewriter to the hospital, the place he labored on his fiction and poetry. It was the beginning of a sample — pursuing his writing whereas holding full-time jobs as a advisor for Labat-Anderson after which as a speechwriter for the mortgage mortgage firm Fannie Mae and the accounting agency Deloitte. He additionally wrote for magazines like Harper’s and Life.

In 1997, Mr. Duffy revealed his second novel, “Final Comes the Egg,” a few 12-year-old boy’s flight from his residence within the Maryland suburbs with two pals after his mom’s demise. It was primarily based partially on his childhood in suburban Garrett Park.

Then, in 2011, got here “Catastrophe Was My God,” accomplished after years of ruminating about Rimbaud’s poetry and wild life. He wanted to discover a approach to render the unpleasant elements of his life — to “create that oxymoron, a likable Arthur Rimbaud,” as he advised The Day by day Beast.

“The World as I Discovered It,” acquired new life in 2010 when The New York Evaluate of Books’s publishing division reissued it as a “traditional” after it had gone out of print.

“It’s a severe novel concerning the grip of concepts and a historic novel executed with a really private and remarkably gentle contact,” Edwin Frank, the editorial director of the publishing division, stated in an electronic mail. He added, “Bruce’s guide sometimes drives philosophers bats, by the best way — one other factor that recommends it.”

Along with his daughter Kate, Mr. Duffy is survived by one other daughter, Lily Duffy; his stepson, Sam Kupfer; his spouse, Susan Segal, and a granddaughter. His marriage to Marianne Glass led to divorce.