Teaching the Dog to Read by Jonathan Carroll
My rating: 4/5 cats
thank god for fox, without whom i wouldn’t even have known this story existed. and it does exist. and has existed, digitally at least, since last november. and while i immediately ordered the $3.99 NOOK version upon learning of it, i also ordered the considerably more expensive signed limited edition from subterranean (only 1,000 copies—hurry up!) because my jonathan carroll collection doesn’t understand e-books.
and while this is only a brief novella, it has all the things you want when you’re reading jonathan carroll: bull terriers, expensive and well-crafted objets, in this case—a watch, the porous boundaries between the world as we know it and the world beyond, infusing the everyday with profundity—the utterance of “tuna fish” attaining the same mystique as some ancient incantation and a can opener deployed as an admission of love, enigmatic and hungry women, the unusual and powerful genesis of romantic love, vibrant allegorical anecdotes that explain esoteric concepts in the most approachable way, quirky imagery like “the ants with big shoes,” life and afterlife and reincarnation and dreams. and all in under a hundred pages. not too shabby, carroll!
it’s well worth $3.99! and if you’re a true fan, it’s worth $40.00. which is what i keep telling myself, anyway.
* and if you screw up and forget you already ordered it, you may end up with TWO $40.00 hardcovers!*
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