{"id":2342,"date":"2012-08-29T17:43:46","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T21:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=2342"},"modified":"2012-08-30T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T15:28:28","slug":"read-this-dog-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/29\/read-this-dog-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Read This: The Dog Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Peter
\nphoto: Tory Read<\/font><\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, I began writing the occasional book review for the Dallas Morning News<\/i>; my first article<\/a> was about David Dufty’s How to Build an Android<\/i><\/a>, an account of a university computer science lab’s effort to build a robotic simulation of Philip K. Dick. (And it worked, too, at least until they lost its head…)<\/p>\n

For my second Morning News<\/i> piece, I keep up the science fiction vibe<\/a> with a look at Peter Heller<\/a>‘s debut novel, The Dog Stars<\/i><\/a>. Here’s how I described the context of its publication:<\/p>\n

\n

In a little over a half century, life after the end of the world has subtly shifted from a topic fit mostly for science fiction, as in Richard Matheson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s I Am Legend<\/i> (1954) or Walter M. Miller, Jr.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Canticle for Liebowitz<\/i> (1960), to the stuff of top-shelf literary fiction, most notably Cormac McCarthy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Road<\/i> (2006).<\/p>\n

The Dog Stars<\/i> positions itself squarely in the latter camp. Although there are scattered references to the superbug that set the novel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disaster in motion, including a rumor that it might have been a biological weapon, Heller\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s focus is firmly fixed on Hig and his shifting emotional state.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hig is the novel’s 40-year-old narrator, a widow who lives in an abandoned Colorado airport with his aging dog and a sharpshooting survivalist named Bangley. Bangley drives Hig nuts, but he also keeps the two of them alive, and Hig can always get away for a couple days in his small plane. His frustration mounts, though, until one day he sets out after a possible hint of other survivors… As I put it, the book “can feel less like a 21st-century apocalypse and more like a 19th-century frontier narrative… [with] echoes of Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson,” including some intensely violent scenes. But it’s also a book of “quiet, poetic beauty,” driven not by the plot device of the end of the world but by Hig’s voice. I’d actually set this book aside when I first heard about it, because I didn’t feel up for another literary run at science fictional themes at that moment, but I’m glad that the Morning News<\/i> encouraged me to take a second look—this is a great story, and I’m interested now in tracking down some of Heller’s nonfiction writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

photo: Tory Read Earlier this summer, I began writing the occasional book review for the Dallas Morning News; my first article was about David Dufty’s How to Build an Android, an account of a university computer science lab’s effort to build a robotic simulation of Philip K. Dick. (And it worked, too, at least until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[437,436,51,438],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2346,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions\/2346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}