The Books: “The World and Other Places” – ‘The 24-Hour Dog’ (Jeanette Winterson)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson

A collection of short (sometimes very short) stories by Jeanette Winterson. I loved seeing her in the shorter form, because much of the boring-ness of her last couple of books was not there (for the most part) – and she seemed to have taken the reins off. These stories are not just about infidelity, and love triangles involving redheaded women. There are fairy tales here, fantastical worlds … and it’s not JUST about love. It’s about all kinds of things. Come to think of it – the title of the collection (which is the title of one of the stories) is perfect. It is about the world and other places. Some of the stories don’t work for me … some of the writing has a blunt showoff-ish tone that makes me roll my eyes … but other times, Winterson dives right in to her made-up worlds, and transports me. She really can be dazzling. I love her imagination. These aren’t typical short stories. The narratives often are not recognizable, in terms of that particular form. There is no kitchen-sink reality here. Most of her characters do not have names. Most of the stories are first-person narration – and the “voice” is not distinct. It’s Jeanette Winterson’s voice. Every voice she writes in is her own (which, I think, is why some of her lesser stuff can be so boring.) BUT: her own voice is exciting enough, and interesting enough … When she puts it in service of a story that works, it’s perfect.

I won’t excerpt from all of the stories … just a sampling.

The first story in the collection is called ‘The 24-Hour Dog’. The plotline is simple (almost too simple – there’s not much to it. It’s really about the THOUGHTS she has … not the events that take place): a woman who lives on a farm decides to get a dog. She goes and picks him up. He is a puppy. The puppy fills her with a joy – she loves him – But there is something else going on. His love for her, unconditional, unnerves her. She feels “found out”. She cannot hide from this dog. It is almost too confronting to have him around. What does it mean to be loved unconditionally? How on earth can she bear it?

I am particularly moved by this story right now … because of my new furry companion who stares up at me, trying to figure me out, loving me even though she doesn’t know me yet.

Here’s an excerpt. I love how she guesses at the dog’s perspective.

EXCERPT FROM The World and Other Places: Stories – ‘The 24-Hour Dog’, by Jeanette Winterson

I had collected him that morning from his brothers and sisters, his mother, his friends on the farm. He was to be my dog, shot out of a spring litter, a coil of happiness. Bit by bit he would unfold.

He liked my sports car until it moved. Movement to him was four legs or maybe two. He had not yet invented the wheel. He lay behind my neck in stone-age despair, not rigid, but heavy, as his bladder emptied his enterprise, and the blue leather seats were puddled under puppy rain.

We were home in less than five minutes and he staggered from the car as though it were the hold of a slave ship and him left aboard for six months or more. His oversize paws were hesitant on the gravel because he half believed the ground would drive off with him.

I motioned him to the threshold; a little door in a pair of great gates. He looked at me: What should he do? I had to show him that two paws first, two paws after, would jump him across the wooden sill. He fell over but wagged his tail.

I had spent the early morning pretending to be a dog. I had crawled around my kitchen and scullery on all fours at dog height looking for toxic substances (bleach), noxious hazards (boot polish), forbidden delights (rubber boots), death traps (electric wires), swallowables, crunchables, munchables and saw-the-dog-in-half shears and tools.

I had spent the day before putting up new shelving and rearranging the cupboards. A friend from London asked me if I was doing Feng Shui. I had to explain that this was not about energy alignments but somewhere to put the dog biscuits.

I rerouted the washing machine hoses. I had read in my manual that Lurchers like to chew washing machine hoses but only when the machine is on; thus, if they fail to electrocute themselves, they at least succeed in flooding the kitchen.

The week before I had forced my partner to go into Mothercare to purchase a baby gate. The experience nearly killed her. It was not the pastel colours, piped music and cartoon screen, or the assistants, specially graded into mental ages two to four and four to six, or the special offer, one hundred bibs for the price of fifty, it was that she was run down by a fork lift truck moving a consignment of potties.

I fitted the gate. I tried to patch up my relationship. I spent a sleepless night on our new bean bag. I was pretending to be a dog.

The farmer telephoned me the following day.

‘Will you come and get him now?’

Now. This now. Not later. Not sooner. Here now. Quick now.

Yes I will come for you. Roll my strength into a ball for you. Throw myself across chance for you. I will be the bridge or the pulley because you are the dream.

He’s only a dog. Yes but he will find me out.

Dog and I did the gardening that virgin morning of budding summer. That is, I trimmed the escallonia and he fetched the entire contents of the garage, apart from the car. It began with a pruning gauntlet which he could see I needed. There followed a hanging basket, a Diana Ross cassette, a small fire extinguisher, a hand brush that made him look like Hitler, and one by one a hoarded collection of Victorian tiles. Being a circular kind of dog he ran in one door to seek the booty and sped out of another to bring it to me. He had not learned the art of braking. When he wanted to stop he just fell over.

I looked at the hoard spread before me. Perhaps this was an exercise in Feng Shui after all. Why did I need a Diana Ross tape? Why was I storing six feet of carpet underlay? I don’t have any carpets.

The questions we ask of the universe begin and end with questions like these. He was a cosmic dog.