Last Days of the Dog-Men

In prose so precise and beautiful it makes a reader's hair stand on end, Brad Watson writes about people and dogs: dogs as companions, as accomplices, and as unwitting victims of human passions; and people responding to dogs as missing parts of themselves. In each of these stories he captures the animal crannies of the human personality - yearning for freedom, mourning the loss of something wild, drawn to human connection but also to thoughtless abandon and savagery without judgment. Ultimately, however, people are responsible where dogs are not: "I'm told in medieval times," the narrator of the title story tells us, "animals were regularly put on trial, with witnesses and testimony and so forth. But it is relatively rare today."

First sentence: WHEN I WAS A BOY MY FAMILY ALWAYS HAD HUNTing dogs, always bird dogs, once a couple of blueticks, and for six years anywhere from six to fifteen beagles.

Year

1996

Language

English

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Editions

5

Pages

146

ISBN

9780393321203

Data source: Wikidata