Afterglow (a dog memoir)

Afterglow (a dog memoir)

by Eileen Myles
Afterglow (a dog memoir)

Afterglow (a dog memoir)

by Eileen Myles

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Prolific and widely renowned, Eileen Myles is a trailblazer whose decades of literary and artistic work “set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match” (New York Review of Books). This newest book paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of a beloved confidant: the pit bull called Rosie.

In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly became central to the writer’s life and work. During the course of their sixteen years together, Myles was madly devoted to the dog’s wellbeing, especially in her final days. Starting from the emptiness following Rosie’s death, Afterglow (a dog memoir) launches a heartfelt and fabulist investigation into the true nature of the bond between pet and pet-owner. Through this lens, we witness Myles’s experiences with intimacy and spirituality, celebrity and politics, alcoholism and recovery, fathers and family history, as well as the fantastical myths we spin to get to the heart of grief.

Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles’s childhood puppet to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull, from lyrical transcriptions of their walks to Rosie’s enlightened narration from the afterlife, Afterglow (a dog memoir) illuminates all that it can mean when we dedicate our existence to a dog.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802128553
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date: 09/18/2018
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 224
Sales rank: 680,443
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Eileen Myles is the author of more than twenty books, including Afterglow (a dog memoir), Inferno (a poet’s novel), Chelsea Girls, and Cool For You. Myles’s many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, as well as grants from Creative Capital (nonfiction) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (poetry), and the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant.

Read an Excerpt

You’ve just fallen down on the grass. I thought this would be a nice place to sit in the afternoon. The cat shows up, black, looking out. When I’m surrounded by trees, a condition I’ve sought out pretty persistently throughout my life, the thing I think I might like the most about them is this whisper like all the hair of the world passing through the tunnel of one single breath—if that is a form of percussion. This irregular hiss of trees and wind. I think it is my mother. And I am her son, and you are my dog.

Our relationship is part discomfort & humiliation and part devotion. Oh once upon a time I wanted a dog exactly as much as I wanted to be alive. Maybe I didn’t even want a dog then. I wanted to say that I was alive. Even to be a dog would be enough and how good if I could be seen wanting one and could begin asking for it incessantly—if I could summon up asking in every possible manner. Please. Leaving notes under pillows and toilet seat covers. Did I want a dog, really. No I was a kid who was desperate to be seen in a state of desire & supplication. That was many years ago. I wanted to already be my yes. A positive child in a state of knowing & reaching out. Not for myself but towards a friend.

Table of Contents

[The Letter] 1

Protect Me You 4

My Dog/My God 11

The Death of Rosie 25

The Puppets' Talk Show 28

Goodnight, Sweet Queen 44

The Rape of Rosie 60

Just Before and Just After 66

x (transcription) 76

My Father Came Again as a Dog 88

xx 88

FOAM 93

xxx 105

The Navel 108

The Order of Drinking (3-D) 112

xxxx 136

Dog House 141

"The Dog's Journey" 157

To the Post Office 176

The Walk 197

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