Tooth and Claw . . . and other stories, by T. C. Boyle
There were rather more stories about drunkenness and/or drug-addledness that I cared for (I am getting so extremely prudish in old age) but on the whole I enjoyed this collection.
My favorites:
Dogolgy. A man watches, spellbound, while one of his neighbors literally goes to the dogs. She's doing her thesis on the behavior and lives of domestic dogs, going so far as to join a local pack --
And her nose. She's made a point of sticking it in anything the dogs did, breathing deep of it, rebooting the olfactory receptors of a brain that had been deadened by perfume and underarm deodorant and all the other stifling orders of civilization. Every smell was a discovery, and every dog discovered more of the world in ten minutes running loose than a human being would discover in ten years of sitting behind the wheel of a car or standing at the lunch counter in a deli or even hiking the Alps. What she was doing, or attempting to do, was nothing short of recording her sense so that she could think like a dog and interpret the whole world -- not just the human world -- as dogs did.
Naturally enough, most of her other neighbors and certainly her husband are alarmed and even outraged by her increasing doggishness, but the story ends with an indication that the human members of the dog pack may grow.
Chicxulub. Chicxulub is the name of the asteroid, or possibly comet, that crashed into the Earth off Mexico very long ago and ended the Age of the Dinosaurs. A man meditates on these and other cosmic disasters of the past and likely future while waiting for news of a teenage daughter believed to have been killed by a drunk driver. Even for someone like myself, who has never had children, there's a convincing chill in the comparison of such global horrors with such an intensely personal one.
Tooth and Claw. This is one of the excessively drunk stories that I nevertheless found compelling for the sheer oddness of it. A young man at loose ends wins a serval, an African wild cat, in a bar bet and, astonishingly, keeps it, or tries to. Of course, there'd be no story if he did the obvious thing and contacted a zoo or animal rescue group to take it. Eventually he makes a ridiculous attempt to set it free (he'd been keeping it locked in his bedroom) by leaving the window of the bedroom in his upper story apartment open, and then closes himself in the room with the animal who is no doubt still there.
The Doubtfulness of Water: Madam Knight's Journey to New York, 1702. A very unusual story for Boyle, I'm not sure he's written another like it -- at least I haven't read it if he has. Because of her fear of water travel, a woman who needs to travel from Boston to New York on business must do so by horseback in the company of such guides as she can find and hire along the way, and stay in whatever shelter is available at the end of each day. This takes several months (including a long stay with relatives in New Haven), and Boyle gives a detailed account of the scenery (mostly woods) and difficulties along the way. Really made me appreciate modern travel options, to say nothing of modern motels and hotels.
My favorites:
Dogolgy. A man watches, spellbound, while one of his neighbors literally goes to the dogs. She's doing her thesis on the behavior and lives of domestic dogs, going so far as to join a local pack --
And her nose. She's made a point of sticking it in anything the dogs did, breathing deep of it, rebooting the olfactory receptors of a brain that had been deadened by perfume and underarm deodorant and all the other stifling orders of civilization. Every smell was a discovery, and every dog discovered more of the world in ten minutes running loose than a human being would discover in ten years of sitting behind the wheel of a car or standing at the lunch counter in a deli or even hiking the Alps. What she was doing, or attempting to do, was nothing short of recording her sense so that she could think like a dog and interpret the whole world -- not just the human world -- as dogs did.
Naturally enough, most of her other neighbors and certainly her husband are alarmed and even outraged by her increasing doggishness, but the story ends with an indication that the human members of the dog pack may grow.
Chicxulub. Chicxulub is the name of the asteroid, or possibly comet, that crashed into the Earth off Mexico very long ago and ended the Age of the Dinosaurs. A man meditates on these and other cosmic disasters of the past and likely future while waiting for news of a teenage daughter believed to have been killed by a drunk driver. Even for someone like myself, who has never had children, there's a convincing chill in the comparison of such global horrors with such an intensely personal one.
Tooth and Claw. This is one of the excessively drunk stories that I nevertheless found compelling for the sheer oddness of it. A young man at loose ends wins a serval, an African wild cat, in a bar bet and, astonishingly, keeps it, or tries to. Of course, there'd be no story if he did the obvious thing and contacted a zoo or animal rescue group to take it. Eventually he makes a ridiculous attempt to set it free (he'd been keeping it locked in his bedroom) by leaving the window of the bedroom in his upper story apartment open, and then closes himself in the room with the animal who is no doubt still there.
The Doubtfulness of Water: Madam Knight's Journey to New York, 1702. A very unusual story for Boyle, I'm not sure he's written another like it -- at least I haven't read it if he has. Because of her fear of water travel, a woman who needs to travel from Boston to New York on business must do so by horseback in the company of such guides as she can find and hire along the way, and stay in whatever shelter is available at the end of each day. This takes several months (including a long stay with relatives in New Haven), and Boyle gives a detailed account of the scenery (mostly woods) and difficulties along the way. Really made me appreciate modern travel options, to say nothing of modern motels and hotels.