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A review by featherbooks
Afterglow (a Dog Memoir) by Eileen Myles
4.0
[b:Afterglow|34273725|Afterglow (a Dog Memoir)|Eileen Myles|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1494440821s/34273725.jpg|55332660] by [a:Eileen Myles|29605|Eileen Myles|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1203806884p2/29605.jpg] s a pastiche (lovely word), a paean to her pit bull, Rosie, and touches on children, parents, Ireland, alcoholism, goddesses, rape, Chora in Istanbul, San Diego, teaching, Kurt Cobain, old surfers, gender, sex, tapestries, history and a lot about foam. Not linear, not a story but bits and pieces that keep me reading in a slapdash way, picking it up from time to time, reading it backwards. The jacket cover says spirituality, celebrity and politics as well.
“Small bit of advice to the reader. No one ever wants to hear from anyone at any time anywhere that they have just purchased your book at the library sale. It’s like saying hey I plucked your book out from under a forklift just before it was heading to the dump. To write a book is to dig a hole in eternity....I feel an awe for the incredible permanence of the act of writing. Do you think I had any idea what I was about to write today when I sat down. No I thought I just better do it. And here I am already past the middle of my life. Sitting here humming along on the only road I know. Everything’s out there shifting. So maybe the writer should sit still. In her orange sand chair while the dog is dying. This might be when she would do her writing.…"
Per Rosie (the dog): "But as you pointed out to that Irish writer, Dave, when he brilliantly proposed he write a chick lit book --uh, Dave all men's books are chick lit. Every woman in literature is some guy's notion of how women think. Men invented the genre (calling it literature) yet when women write books they get cordoned off as chick lit. Where is dick lit I ask?"
“Small bit of advice to the reader. No one ever wants to hear from anyone at any time anywhere that they have just purchased your book at the library sale. It’s like saying hey I plucked your book out from under a forklift just before it was heading to the dump. To write a book is to dig a hole in eternity....I feel an awe for the incredible permanence of the act of writing. Do you think I had any idea what I was about to write today when I sat down. No I thought I just better do it. And here I am already past the middle of my life. Sitting here humming along on the only road I know. Everything’s out there shifting. So maybe the writer should sit still. In her orange sand chair while the dog is dying. This might be when she would do her writing.…"
Per Rosie (the dog): "But as you pointed out to that Irish writer, Dave, when he brilliantly proposed he write a chick lit book --uh, Dave all men's books are chick lit. Every woman in literature is some guy's notion of how women think. Men invented the genre (calling it literature) yet when women write books they get cordoned off as chick lit. Where is dick lit I ask?"