The Story I Am - Roger Rosenblatt

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It is a very great book. You ought to read it sometime. I ought to read it sometime. But the dog barks, so I cannot read Crime and Punishment, and so I have considered killing the dog, as Raskolnikov killed the two old women.

      If you kill one dog, after all, what matters it to the balance of the world, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

      Of course, you do not hear the barking; you, swaddled in the sweet silence of your Cadillac Escalade or your Library of Congress, you do not hear my Cairn terrier with the tommy-gun voice. Nor can you hear what my Cairn terrier hears. Nor can I. But I can hear her. It is a metaphysical riddle, is it not, that she barks at what she hears, but I can only hear her barking. Who then would hear the sound if I felled her with a tree in the forest? Bark to bark?

      What gets me is how little she cares for my peace of mind. She has not read Crime and Punishment. She knows nothing of the pleasures of sitting back with chocolate kisses on a dismal November afternoon—the trees shorn, the wind mixing with rain—and reading of starving young Russians tormenting themselves in the city of_______, in the year_______. Six long years I have owned this dog, feeding and bathing and tummy-scratching, in return for puppy barking and dog barking. Now she is not six, I remind her. She is forty-two, older than I. Time to settle down, I remind her. Tempus fugit. Cave canem. (Barkbarkbark.) She is not the dog I had hoped for, not that dog at all.

      Not that I was hoping for Lassie, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or Rin Tin Tin, or Yukon King, or Fala, or Checkers, or Him, or Her, or any dog that flies or takes fingerprints or says “Ruth” in bars. I was not expecting maybe Ms. Magic Dog of the Twenty-first Century, who would not only fetch me my copy of Crime and Punishment, but who also would have translated the book from the original. Not my dog. Not the dog of my dreams.

      All I ever wanted was a good and quiet dog, like the dignified hound in Piero di Cosimo’s The Death of Procris, sitting so mournfully, so nobly at the feet of his fallen mistress. A dog like that would not bark more than once a month. A dog like that would know his place in the order of things, would state by the mere fact of his docile existence that there are those who rule and those who sit quietly, those who read Crime and Punishment and those who don’t, and therefore do not make it impossible for those who do, just because they hear things that those who do, don’t.

      Damn it, dog. Am I not king of the jungle? Am I not God’s reason that civilization is not going to the Cairns?

      Barkbarkbarkbarkbark.

      There is nothing out there. I have been stalled on p. 71 for an hour, and there is nothing out there, while Raskolnikov has axed the two old women over and over again. He feels no remorse. What remorse would I feel—except to acknowledge in the foul tunnels of my heart that I am for whom the dog barks? That she barks to protect only me?

      Now she is still for a moment. The brown blank eyes fixed with alarm. The head loaded, ready to fire. What can she hear? Is it the sound of an enemy I cannot hear yet? Or is it the sound of the enemy I can never hear, the sound of evil itself, of my own murderous impulse to kill the very dog who barks to keep me from killing the very dog who barks to keep me from killing me?

      { column in The Washington Post }

       May I Kill You?

      And what do you do?

      I’m a writer. May I kill you?

      What do you write, if you don’t mind my asking?

      I do mind. May I kill you?

      Would I have read anything you wrote?

      No. No one has. May I kill you?

      That last novel of yours—what was it about?

      Nothing. May I k . . .

      And yet it showed promise. Or am I thinking of another writer?

      You are.

      I’m a novelist, too, you know. I wonder if I could send you my manuscript?

      Of course. Please do send me your manuscript. But not by snail mail. Send it FedEx. So I can have it sooner. You know, I was remarking to my pet bat, Arthur, just the other night. I said, Arthur, I wish to God someone, anyone, would send me his manuscript. Or hers. I’d like to read the manuscripts in North America first, then extend my purview to the Baltic states and Indonesia, where, I understand, there are many more manuscripts.

      Are you okay? You’re sounding overwrought. Kind of manic. But I guess all writers are a bit wound tight.

      Yes we are. May I kill you?

      I must tell you, this piece of yours is great. But it’s not for us.

      Who is it for, do you think?

      Can’t say. It’s just not for us.

      Maybe it’s not for anyone. What do you think?

      I don’t know. But I do know it’s not for us. On the other hand, we really loved it and want to publish it as soon as possible.

      You do?

      Absolutely. Only, the first hundred pages? They have to go.

      But the book is only 104 pages long.

      Is it ever! We loved it!

      What’s wrong with the first hundred pages?

      Nothing major. We can’t tell who the main character is. And we don’t know what the story is about. And we wouldn’t be interested if we did. Do you see what we mean?

      Absolutely. I could not agree more. I worked on the novel only six years, give or take, to pass the time. I knew it was shit. But you know how bored one gets. It was just something to do.

      We understand perfectly. Would you like to kill us?

      Would I! But not quickly. Crush your tongue in a vise. Pluck out your eyes with sherbet scoops. Sear your ass with a soldering iron. That’s the way I’d like to do it.

      I love your work.

      You love my work?

      It reminds me of Proust.

      It does? Have you ever read Proust?

      No. No one has. No one’s ever read Proust. It’s just something to say.

      So you really don’t love my work.

      No, but I love Proust.

      Me, too. May I kill you?

      Know what I love best about your work? Its neorealism, that’s what. And its neoplatonism, too. And its neologisms, they’re the tops! I also love its lapidary style. Its catachresis.

      Everything actually. The entire oeuvre.

      Are you from The New York Review of Books?

      Who isn’t?

      What did your review say about my novel? I forget.

      We called it “lurid yet redeeming.”

      Ah, yes.

      We also called it “lacking in style and content, yet brave.” Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever read a braver novel. How it fought off those other novels. Oh, see what I’ve done. I’ve hurt your feelings. Look. The trouble with you writers is you’re too touchy. Too—how shall I put it—needy.

      Why not say needy?

      Needy. Yes. All you ever want is praise, praise, and more praise. And when you don’t get it, you get all steamed up and pissed off. And you seek revenge. Revenge! Against us. You want to kill us. Other people. Why you don’t even think about other people—unless, of course, we’re praising you. Any other time, we’re useless to you. Get real, will you? No one receives praise. That’s the way of the world. When the guy gives you change at the 7-Eleven, do you tell him: “Hey man! Great change!” Planet Earth, me bucko. Your work may be brilliant or it may stink, and

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