Let the Dog DriveIt's 1976. Bud Salem, 18-years-old, is fleeing his mother's TV church and meets a woman pitching oranges in the Mojave. She's Sylvia Cushman, a 45 year-old housewife, who loves driving alone through the desert. They traverse through western motels and Apache gas stations where Sylvia gives long lectures about Emily Dickinson and drags Bud up into the mesas to search for petroglyphs. After continuing adventures in Detroit, New York, and Amherst, the travelers part... In many ways Let the Dog Drive is an askew detective novel - when a character dies under strange circumstances in Texas, Bud goes to the Panhandle to uncover what happened. His strange narration does contain pleasures of the genre: a shootout inside an aquarium; a faked death; another shootout on a chicken farm in Texas . . . But Let the Dog Drive is also a freewheeling merging of many other genres and concerns - Hollywood, hardboiled novels of the 1930's, Emily Dickinson's white dress, hallucinatory cacti, the Book of Luke... And dogs. Sylvia is married to an auto engineer in Detroit, and this man studies auto accidents by letting dogs drive the cars. Literally. The drivers are often Dalmatians . . |
Contents
The Fall of the House of Cushman | 47 |
Sleepers East | 99 |
The Mermaid Gesture | 143 |
Copyright | |
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asked began Ben's beneath Bloomfield Hills blue body breath Clifford Brown crash dead door dress driving drove ears elephants Emily Dickinson face father feet film noir fingers Fontanel freak front fucking girl glass going grabbed gripped hair hand hardboiled head heard Hollywood holy inside James Dean jerked Jesus Joan Didion Joshua Cushman kitchen knew laughed leaned legs Lester light lips looked motel mother mouth Najaf never night Ocracoke Orange Boy Orleans paused Penguin pitching private eye pulled Raymond Chandler road rolled screaming seat Shem shook shot shoulder shouted slid Speckled Bird stared station wagon stood stopped suddenly Sylvia Cushman taped tell Texas told took Tower Records tree turned voice Volkswagen walked wanted watching wearing wheel whispered window woman write yelled