Paperback(Reprint)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
The anonymous narrator of this remarkable novel is a young drifter in search of his future. The son of a passionate beauty and gentle doctor, he roams the border between the United States and Mexico, eventually settling in a sleepy Baja town on the verge of transformation.
Here he learns to stand face-to-face with dogs in a makeshift ring, to fight for money and fame, and becomes involved with a powerful and corrupt entrepreneur. But when he finds friendship with a revolutionary old poet and love with a beautiful, innocent girl, everything changes. Caught between the ways of his past and the dreams of his future, he must make a devastating choice that could cost him everything.
Written with bold lyricism and magical flair, The Dog Fighter is an exhilarating tale of brutality and violence, love and wisdom, heartbreak and redemption.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060597580 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2015 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.68(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Dog Fighter
A Novel
Chapter One
In Mexico I fought dogs. I fought on a rooftop surrounded by bougainvillea and colorful shards of broken glass. Before the fighting I waited in a small room where bloodstained ragmen came hunchbacked from shadows to wrap my forearm in a heavy rug. Over my hand they placed a glove made to have metal claws. The leather of the glove softened with the blood and sweat of each fight and with each fight the claws were made more dull. When the ragmen finished wrapping the heavy rug they led me from the small room to a ring surrounded by yelling men. On these nights the sky of Canción darkened too slow for the eyes to see. The last of the sun always in the eyes and teeth of the dogs. Reflected into the ring from the broken glass buried in the walls. When the leashes were undone the yelling men stood shaking the metal fence of the ring. I crouched in silence and waited for the dogs to bark and show their necks. And then I tore at their necks with my claws. I let the dogs bite themselves onto the heavy rug so I could better put in their eyes with my thumb. Many times I snapped the bones of the small legs with my hands. I beat them in the heads with my fists. Once when a dog took me to the ground and went for my neck I caught her by the ears and dragged my teeth down between his eyes to the end of its nose.
I was a young man when I fought dogs in Mexico. There were many dog fighters then but none as great in size or as quiet. Then I was unsure of my words. But the fighting always was a language I spoke well. And the old men of Canción the men who have known fighting for as long as there have been dog fighters to admire placed upon me their most respect. These men spoke of my fights often and the stories they told of me then they still tell today. Of this I am sure.
As a boy in Veracruz my grandfather spoiled me with bedtime stories of men fighting beasts whose teeth were sharp as obsidian shards and whose eyes were lit by fire. The old man sat on a chair by my bed and the words of the old mans stories took the flames of candles and danced over the walls of my room shadows of men who wrestled sharks and wore the teeth of jaguars around their necks. He sat with his ruined hands wrapped in quilted cotton blankets laid between two charcoal braziers. Comfortable in my bed I studied the pinched wrinkles of his mouth until my eyelids closed. Lured by his whispering each night I followed my grandfather into violent dreams of glistening snarls and musky breaths. Dreams that were always the most beautiful and difficult thing to see. And each night in his whisper the desire to hear my own name in these stories of violent men grew strong within me.
Orozco went alone into the jungle with his dog and a one shot rifle and a miners candle lit on the brim of his hat. At noon into a jungle so choked with limbs the candle flame his only light. Orozcos dog went ahead following the scent of the beast. And when he heard his dog cry and ran to it curled with its soft belly torn open over the ground Orozco slit the dogs throat to save his bullet and knew the beast was very near and not afraid of him. But Orozco also was without fear. He knew that he would have to wait until the jaguar pounced from above from one of those wet black limbs and so he pressed on farther by licking his finger and thumb and putting out the flame and chose to rest his back against the trunk of a tree in that dark to wait.
And did the jaguar come then? I begged my grandfather.
You will have to wait until tomorrow. The old man teased. Then I will tell you what became of Orozco.
When I awoke the next morning he had placed in the palm of my hand a jaguar tooth. Dipped in silver and held by a leather strap.
Can you see Orozco waiting? My grandfather asked the following night. Looking to the shadows over the walls of my room whose shape I changed with the squinting of my eyes. My grandfathers whisper a warm hiss in my ear. The silver of the tooth cool against my chest. Can you hear him listening for the jaguars claws sinking into soft wood? Can you see him searching the dark for the light of the jaguars yellow eyes?
Yes.
Good. Now follow him to your dreams.
But my mother did not approve of these stories my grandfather told. And because of this he threatened always to take them from me if I ever shared our secrets with her.
I share my secrets with only you. My grandfather whispered. To everyone else I lie.
To everyone else my grandfather winked and smiled and shuffled from room to room of my fathers great house muttering to himself and scratching his head. When my mother asked for these stories I answered her only with silence. And for this my mother beat me while my father chose to read his books. But I did not care because I understood that her beating me only made my grandfather more proud and then as a boy my grandfathers stories meant more to me than my mothers happiness.
You cannot continue to deceive him. My mother yelled at her father. Our family has suffered enough.
But when my mother yelled at her father like this he only winked and smiled and shuffled from the room muttering to himself and scratching his head. And after she had beaten me always he came to my room and leaned over my bed and asked if I wanted a story ...
The Dog FighterA Novel. Copyright © by Marc Bojanowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
What People are Saying About This
“Remarkable…Bojanowski’s narrator has no name, but he is one of the most profoundly felt characters in recent fiction.”
“A rare first novel — fully realized, unbelievably accomplished, and a great read. Bojanowski’s prose shimmers with nuance.”
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
"Do you believe the decisions a man makes make him his own God?" asks the unnamed narrator's father upon learning that his son just drowned a bag of kittens. Mistaking his father's thoughtfulness for weakness, the boy instead dwells on his grandfather's secret stories of valorous men who fight jaguars in the night, of power that lies in raw strength, of the merciless, mythic blood that flows in his own veins.
So begins Marc Bojanowski's The Dog Fighter, a riveting story of an adolescent's quest to prove his manhood in 1940s Mexico. After his mother dies in childbirth, he abandons his father to grief and madness and migrates north, working as a laborer along the way. In California, a married woman seduces him into killing her husband, but since the victim is also Mexican, he is merely deported back to Veracruz. Again following the demand for manual labor, he turns up at Canción, a picturesque seaside town in Baja, to work on the construction of a new hotel. Here he discovers the local tradition of dog fighting, which pits barely armed men against bloodthirsty dogs, some with teeth filed to lethal points.
Yet, as the Herculean protagonist finds a calling true to his grandfather's whispers and dreams, becoming a legend of the dog pits, he finds himself enmeshed in a complicated, surreptitious struggle for the future of Canción. A struggle that pits wealthy businessmen, intent on developing the town for rich American tourists, against a shadowy underground organization of locals determined to keep Canción for themselves.
Facing deception and moral dilemmas at every turn, The Dog Fighter clings to his love for the wealthiest developer's mistress, a love that threatens to undermine friendships, loyalties, and his grandfather's darkest secrets.
Questions for Discussion
- Consider the style in which the novel is written. Why does the author ignore conventional rules of grammar and punctuation in The Dog Fighter? Do you think he is successful in this regard?
- How would you characterize The Dog Fighter's grandfather? How would you characterize his father? Who wins the fight to control him? Do you agree with the grandfather's assessment that, "in this world there are men of books, and men who know what is not in books?" Do the two men represent polarized views of masculinity? Who are some of the father figures encountered by The Dog Fighter?
- Following his grandfather's dictum that "great strength does not feel for anything but itself" what are some of the acts committed by The Dog Fighter until his arrival in Canción? Would his grandfather have approved of fighting dogs? After his first dogfight, The Dog Fighter looks at the dead, mangled dog before him, "the result of my grandfathers hiss," and feels "ashamed of myself." Why?
- When the insurgents set the hotel tractors on fire, The Dog Fighter notes that, "for all its peace and beauty Canción was at war. The businessmen constructing their dreams in the daylight they shared with los Cancioneros also dreaming but different dreams." What do the businessmen dream of? What do los Cancioneros believe? Does this sound like the familiar battle between progress and tradition? Do you find the motivations of one group to be more noble, or more practical, than the other? By the end of the novel are such descriptions still applicable? Could the dogfights be seen as a metaphor for the struggle in which the winner decides the future of Canción? Are the dogfights fair?
- Although the local people of Canción enjoy the dogfights, the businessmen also bet on which mistress would cry first because, "to put money only on the fighting of dogs was never enough for them." Why? How else do they add extra excitement, for themselves, in the dogfights? Why does The Dog Fighter feel ashamed when he sees "the sight of myself in the businessmans sunglasses?" What houses the nightclub that the businessmen frequently attend? Do you think this symbolizes their amoral decadence?
- Why is Rodriguez, a businessman, so eager to fight dogs? How does he view dogfighting, and how do The Dog Fighters regard their work? Does Rodriguez ultimately get his wish? Why do you think Cantana's instructions for his demise were so brutal?
- Outside the cathedral, the poet says, "this is a small game I play with God. I am always wanting Him to walk out and He is wanting me to walk in." What do you think he means? By the end of the novel, The Dog Fighter also says of God, "He waits for me, and I wait for him." Is his meaning the same as the poet's? How does their understanding of God affect the characters actions?
- The night before he takes a ferry to Cancion, The Dog Fighter watches a man fight a shark in a tank. How was the fight rigged? In what sort of atmosphere, and venue, does the fight occur? Do the dogfights of Cancion resemble this fight? Why or why not? At his first dogfight, what does the dog fighter mean by, "it was as if I had dropped the knife just as I was lowering myself into the tank of water?" Do you think people naturally enjoy the spectacle of imminent pain? Are the fights different from Jorge the dentist's performances for the children outside, as he springs back from a patient, "with a bloody tooth raised above his head bowing to the childrens applause?"
- What are the circumstances surrounding The Dog Fighter's last fight? How does he resolve the sadistic dilemma posed by Cantana's proposition -- "you kill the dog you live and I let you go. But your friend the poet here and my niece? They die?" Ultimately, did his decision make a difference, or was the outcome preordained? In what other instances did The Dog Fighter make a choice, only to realize later that he was deceived? Is his situation at the end of the novel the result of his own character, or fate, or something else? Why does he say, "God has nothing to do with this?"
- How does the author establish The Dog Fighter's character? How has The Dog Fighter changed by the novel's end? At what points in the book do we see him change? How do Javier and Jorge affect this change? How does he feel as he watches Jorge's tenderness towards his blind mother? Where does he begin to understand that knowledge is more powerful that brute strength? Which character, do you think, symbolizes that idea the most?
- How are Americans presented in The Dog Fighter? Consider The Dog Fighter's encounter with the blonde young man in California, as both men checked their reflections in the same window. Why does he later shatter that window? Do you think los cancioneros fear of "rich American tourists" is warranted? What does it reveal about the American businessman when he calls the old men "cowards," just as Cantana reveals his plan to murder his mistress/niece and blame the old men for the death? Is he, possibly, the only man more powerful than Cantana in The Dog Fighter?
- Is The Dog Fighter a violent book? How do the novel's characters feel about the deaths they cause? How did you react to the scenes of brutality and carnage? How would you describe the author's approach in describing the dogfights? Do you find the graphic incidents gratuitous, or does the author succeed in restoring to violence its ancient qualities of pity and terror?
- The Dog Fighter contains a strong mythical component. How, and where, does the author introduce this? Are you reminded of any other novels, myths, or fairy tales by this novel?
About the author
Marc Bojanowski graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and received his MFA in creative writing from The New School. His writing has appeared in The Literary Review. He lives in northern California.