Le Dio

Le Dio is a fictional French town that Gordon Lachance invented as the setting for a series of war stories he wrote between the ages of nine and fourteen. The stories, which follow a grim squad of American soldiers fighting to retake the town from the Nazis, became a defining element of Gordon's childhood and a crucial bond in his friendship with Teddy Duchamp. They represent Gordon's first sustained attempt to use the place he knew and the things he felt in a piece of fiction, a precursor to the more mature work he would later produce as a novelist.

Origin and Content

The Le Dio stories were set during World War II, two years before Gordon discovered that the Allies did not land in France until 1944. In the stories, a squad of tired American dogfaces fought their way from street to street, trying to retake the town from the Nazis. Gordon wrote about forty Le Dio stories in total, and they were filled with French phrases like "Mon Dieu," "Cherchez le Boche!" and "Fermez le porte!"—in Le Dio, French peasants were always hissing these phrases to the GI dogfaces. The stories typically ended with one lone American soldier coughing out a dying declaration of patriotism and love for the girl back home into the sad and wise face of the platoon sergeant.

Teddy Duchamp's Devotion

Teddy Duchamp was absolutely mad for the Le Dio stories. When Gordon read them aloud, Teddy would hunch over the pages, his eyes big, his brow beaded with sweat, his face twisting. Gordon could almost hear air-cooled Brownings and whistling 88s going off in Teddy's skull. Teddy clamored for more Le Dio stories with an intensity that was both pleasing and frightening to Gordon. By the time Gordon was heartily sick of Le Dio, he was writing the last dozen or so stories just for Teddy. Even after Gordon told the story of "The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan" during the hike to find Ray Brower's body, Teddy immediately asked if Gordon had any new Le Dio stories, revealing that the war series remained his primary interest.

Narrative Significance

The Le Dio stories represent Gordon's first attempt to use the place he knew and the things he felt in a piece of fiction. Writing them gave him a "dreadful exhilaration" as he saw things that had troubled him for years come out in a new form over which he had imposed control. The stories were part of a larger body of childhood writing that included horror stories about characters being burned alive or crooks coming back from the dead, as well as the adventures of the hero Curt Cannon. Gordon's friends liked to read his stories, and Richie Jenner was the first to discover them, telling Gordon he was "pretty good at this." The Le Dio stories, along with Gordon's other childhood writing, were the foundation of his later career as a bestselling novelist, a career that seemed "fucking absurd" to him even as an adult.

Thematic Role

The Le Dio stories function as a key example of how Gordon used fiction to process and control the difficult material of his life. Just as "Stud City" transformed his childhood fear of finding his dead brother Dennis in the closet into a controlled narrative, the Le Dio stories allowed Gordon to impose order on the chaos of war and death. The stories also highlight the different ways Gordon's friends responded to his imagination: Teddy was obsessed with the violent war narratives, while Chris Chambers appreciated the more nuanced story of "Lard Ass Hogan" and encouraged Gordon to pursue writing seriously. The Le Dio stories, with their formulaic endings and recycled French phrases, represent the raw, unpolished beginning of a writer who would later learn to listen more closely to his own voice.