thisnewday | Entries tagged with the dog stars

Finished my 7th or 8th reading of Peter Heller's The Dog Stars earlier today and came to the same conclusion that I had after past reads of this book: that it's one which flirts with greatness but, somehow, comes up just short. I'm not gonna get into a lengthy discussion as to why I think that--that's not my focus here.

What I will say is that, at a major turning point in the story--where Hig encounters Cima and her dad--there's something disturbingly off-key about it. Which, I suppose, could be attributed to Hig's years of isolation and the aftereffects of his illness during the flu pandemic that killed off most of the population, but.

And there are other places too where the give-and-take between characters just feels, I dunno, hurried, contrived, a bit over the top at times, whatever.

So why do I keep coming back to the book? Maybe that's what I keep hoping to discover each time I venture back for another go at it. It's beautifully poetic, in places, and there's real sensitivity in Heller's development of his individual characters.

And there's some actual sunlight, a few brief moments of respite from Hig's post-apocalyptic nightmare which is lacking in, say, Cormack McCarthy's The Road. Which, in my opinion, might be the gold-standard for this genre.

There's probably just enough of those things to allow me to come back, time after time, to indulge the fascination I seem to have retained, over the years, for lives lived off the grid. Maybe since the day I rode my 450 Honda off the commune, for the last time, and back to a more conventional life in the city.

Having closed Heller's book, for perhaps the last time, I feel like my timing is pretty good. Tomorrow is my monthly book club meeting--around a murder mystery that I feel absolutely no affinity or affection for--and this evening I picked up a couple of magazines, based purely on their cover stories, which I hope may ease me back into the world where I supposedly live and may even begin healing the TBI induced by a month of bad fiction.

One is The Atlantic's "Elegy for the American Century" by George Packer and the other is the Smithsonian's "You Are Such a Neanderthal! How new research is changing the beginning of the human story."

Even more therapeutic, before I put together my dinner I went down to the basement and put 27 out of 30 shots into the bullseyes of targets I'd set up three days ago and then hadn't gotten back to.

Like Bruce Bangley, my better days, lately, seem to end with shooting holes in things...

LPK
Dreamwidth
4.24.2019

I'm up, so I switch the computer on, and the WIFI, but don't wait. For the flashing red globe that turns to white and flashes quickly, like a heart working hard. Too hard, for having been at rest over part of the night. Must've been running, running somewhere. Maybe in a dream, do WIFIs dream?

Then the beat slows. Like it's suddenly at rest. As in a cardiac stress test. Like June 6th, for me, but without the radioactive dye running through it.

Then the flashing stops. The globe becomes a steady, white dot on the tower. And below it, the four parallel, curving bands, smallest on the bottom, largest on top appear. White, steady, two lights, one above the other, on the tower. You have internet; you have WIFI, it says.

But I'm not watching. Not this time. I'm in no hurry, not like usual. I sit down in the easy chair. In the corner, with the ottoman. Piled with books, mostly, just a small space leftover for feet.

The one where everyone sits down and says, "Ahh, what a great chair." You know, times when I've brought them upstairs, while I look for something on the computer. The two lights steady, one above the other, not flashing.

Then, looking around, "D'ya have enough books," they'll say.

And I'll laugh about the books. Stacked everywhere. And papers, the piles not tidy. She used to hate that, the papers. "Such a waste," she'd say, "Do you even read them?"

The truth is, I don't. Once in a while, I look for an obit that I know I've printed. Because they tell the story. Things nobody told you about them, while they were alive. The only way you know, sometimes.

Like Dave, my nemesis in high school. Good trumpet player, great showman, but never practiced. Probably, I later realized, because he always worked at his family's dry cleaning business. Always wore starched and pressed dress shirts. Neat and tidy. Always. One of the perks, I guess.

Anyway, I was first chair, but he was the showman. Played Gershwin's "Summertime" as a stand-up solo in concert band one year. Later on, became a Cantor. Didn't know that, until I read his obit. See what I mean?

Always wished we could've talked, you know, later. After all of that. But I never went to the reunions and don't know if he did either. But often thought about him and his "Summertime" solo. Brassy, confident, beautiful.

Anyway, I sit down in the comfortable chair. Wait a few, roll up the sleeve, and do the BP again. 125 over 70, not bad. Even though I ate at my daughter's the evening before. She says I probably don't get ENOUGH salt in my diet. You do need SOME, she says.

They're back from Florida, Beck, Jim, the girls. I hear about the trip, about Disney, and I let myself eat.

Now, I take my BP and read from The Dog Stars again. 100 pages in. The ambush at the trailer. Bangley admonishing Hig for his tactical mistakes. For almost getting himself killed, surviving by luck alone.

At some point, I glance over at the computer and it's booted up, no problem. For a minute, I'm relieved. But then, things don't fix themselves. Not usually. Computers, sometimes yes, but. Not where I come from. Gears, bolts, nuts, they don't fix themselves.

And I'm not lucky, even with computers, that way.

More like Bruce Bangley, the world where I'm from.

I'd like to be lucky, to dream, like Hig. To write, like Heller. But.

So I sit in my chair, feet up. In the small space not covered by books.

I look over at the two lights, one above the other. And wait...

LPK
Dreamwidth
4.20.2019

Just finished my seventh reading of Peter Heller's The Dog Stars tonight. The copy I fortuitously found in the used book store on the north side of James Street. Where I also found a really nice little hard-bound copy of Peter Mayle's A Good Year. Which I'm in the process of re-reading next. And which, in turn, reminded me of Mayle's A Year in Provence which I've also previously enjoyed reading and am thinking about seeking out at the same bookstore. Because that sense of hunting literary treasure, when I go in there, adds to the fun. And, right now, I seriously need some fun...

LPK
LiveJournal
5.13.2016

Just got back from a quick errand up on James Street in Eastwood. It happened to be across the street from The Books End bookstore, so after my errand I parked the car and went in.

The Books End is the used bookstore where I found a like-new copy of The Dog Stars, the book I'd read five or six times and thought I'd lost, except it turns out that the universe had fortuitously blown it off the top of my car and into rosegardenfae's hands because she hadn't read it yet and would likely enjoy it.

Which she did, and that makes me happy. Along with finally knowing what happened to my book. Although the lesson here is obviously that it was never really my book. Nor, for that matter, is any book.

Because, even when they're on our shelf, it's for a finite time. Sometimes that's a lifetime, which is by definition finite, and sometimes it's for five or six readings. Whichever comes first.

But the point is that the words and phrases and lives they contain live on. First in boxes then the estate sale then the used bookstore. Besides which, these days, they're scattered even farther and wider on internet winds. Just like some of Peter Heller's words, which I previously quoted here and which sparked rosegardenfae's interest.

Anyway, I had walked into the bookstore thinking to inquire about one that had sparked my own interest lately but which I'd had trouble finding anywhere. The book is James Harrison's Legends of the Fall and it also became a movie starring Brad Pitt. Harrison died a week or so ago and reading about his life--he's another Dead Hemingway, according to some; inside joke there--renewed my interest in experiencing the story in its original form.

But on my way through the store, I spotted one of the hand-lettered signs that the proprietors place above certain shelves to mark off sections by author or genre or whatever. And this one said "Off-beat and Beat Subjects."

Curious, I scanned the shelves and found books on Beat poets, tattoo art, and 1966 editions of The Evergreen Review. But the one that stopped me was a tiny cluster of faded paperback reprints of Richard Brautigan's Confederate General at Big Sur. Because Brautigan is another one that I'd been looking for.

In another of his books which I'd "owned," either just before or right after my days on The Henrie Farm, he describes the book of Leviticus as a "dark and beautiful ship sailing on our waters." And because I wasn't sure of the exact quote, I searched around a bit to see if I could find some quiet corner where it might've blown on those internet winds.

But before I found it, I came to this one, and it stopped me cold for just a minute. Sort of like a momentary, irregular heartbeat might. Because he'd said, in his whimsical, nouveau-beatnik way,

“Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”

So, yeah, another wind-blown foundling. Not the one I was looking for, but that's the way it is when what you're looking for is on the wind and the trees are everywhere.

Which reminds me of another from that era, Stephen Diamond's What the Trees Said. I don't have any quotes from that one and I'm not going to go looking. My doctor says that heart stoppages and not breathing are not good for me at my age...

LPK
LiveJournal
4.9.2016 (b)

The nurse practitioner, who took care of my grandson at the community health center, glanced at my book, Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, as she was about to leave the examination room for the last time. It was lying on top of our jackets, mine and his, that we'd been carrying with us as we moved from floor to floor, room to room, for the past three hours.

He'd had a flare-up of his asthma, probably triggered, she said, by the respiratory infections we'd all been struggling with lately. I liked her manner, very professional, and when she asked questions she listened to what we had to say. Some of us feel that's an important attribute in a healthcare professional.

She had a nice smile and an interesting face, too, but I valued the care she'd given my grandson above anything else. Odd thing to say, maybe, but just wanted to be clear that I still have priorities, even when multi-tasking.

So as she's leaving she says, refering to the book, "Is it any good? I have it on reserve at the library."

And I said, "Yeah, I think so, I'm on my third reading."

And she said, "Really! That good?"

And I said, "I dunno, maybe. There's just something about it that keeps bringing me back to it."

After a pause, I said, "Could also be that I used the last money on my Barnes & Noble gift card to buy it and I don't have any choice."

She laughed then, flashing that smile, and walked out the door...

LPK
LiveJournal
10.24.2012

On my third time through The Dog Stars, I came to this. My third trek through Heller's book, wandering, as I've sometimes done, through the reels and images, the twining, thematic threads of a movie. The lights and shadows flickering across the screen, again and again, my eyes sometimes finding the hoped-for thing and sometimes not. The same as here.

But having to acknowledge here that it's backwards, the way I've done it. Opposite the format I've known from academic, clockwork days when life was mostly still ahead instead of mostly all behind. The MLA style sheet we were virtually sworn to uphold: the smaller letters, the indentation, the italics. On pain of what, scholarly disgrace?

Except that now the longer quotes, the important things once said that were not mine, are floating in between. The now and the forever. And have become the spectres once spoken of as images in the darkened mirror.

So that what Hig says, the part that resonates, must be writ large and straight and clear. Before it, and all the rest of what we might remember, disappears...

LPK
LiveJournal
10.13.2012

"There is a pain you can't think your way out of. You can't talk it away. If there were someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. Leave his venison in the trail for the coyotes the jays. And. You can't metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of your gut. Muscle sinew bone. It is all of you.

When you walk you propel it forward. When you let go the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling beside you in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Not feeling so well. Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can't bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of a cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with the sound even of breathing."

from The Dog Stars
by Peter Heller
Alfred A. Knopf
New York, 2012

I sometimes feel like I have the two of them within me. Big Hig and Bruce Bangley.

One of them, the believer in whatever it is that's essentially human. The other, convinced that beliefs like that will surely get you killed.

Not if but when...

LPK
LiveJournal
9.27.2012 (b)

I've never been a proselyte for anyone's book, the way I have for Peter Heller's The Dog Stars.

Frankly, it's embarassing. And, yeah, well within the range of my abilities...

LPK
LiveJournal
9.26.2012 (c)

When we left the house, after I'd printed out the school registration forms from online for her son and we were getting into the car for me to drive her to the store and then back to her place again, she looked at me and said,

"You look really stressed. You need to breathe."

And I couldn't say anything, for a minute, because it hit me that this was a line directly out of the book, the one I'm reading again, bit by bit, because I have to.

It's a book about the end of the world, called The Dog Stars, and the survivalist Bangley says it over and over to the protagonist Hig to get him through an attack on the trail near their compound, where Hig is out alone and Bangley has spotted the intruders, from the tower they built to protect their perimeter, but is too far away to effectively engage.

After the attack, which Hig survives due to a sort of deus ex machina provided by Bangley, Hig says,

"Bangley

Yes, Hig?

You're always telling me to breathe.

Laughter through the [portable radio] unit. Genuine relieved laughter. A draught of cold water.

Better than if you fucking don't, huh, Hig?"

The difference is, the one now telling me to breathe is the one out on the trail. Alone with her child in a city where she's afraid. Without a car. Without the one who brought her here.

The one whose mistakes, miscalculations, and outright misdeeds it seems my everlasting duty to amend, adjust, if possible fix.

She is, for want of a softer and therefore less accurate word, another castoff, another girl who has briefly passed through my son's life and then been summarily set adrift.

And so she's out there and I'm back here, inside my own safe perimeter, needing to remember, needing to breathe, needing to become my own better self. Because there are others like her, brave and at risk, who may be depending on it...

LPK
LiveJournal
9.5.2012 (a)

(The exchange between Hig and Bangley, quoted above, is from Peter Heller's book, The Dog Stars, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2012.)

A hundred pages in, at a favorite campsite beneath a surviving stand of Ponderosa pines, Hig's companion, the dog Jasper, has died. The day before had been nearly perfect, although there were the signs. Had been for some time. And Hig allows you to read them, like signs along the trail. As I read them, I understood what they meant, had a sense of imminence which Hig himself did not seem to recognize.

Perhaps I reacted that way because I have my own Jasper near my feet, following me because he fears to be alone, to be left behind. As if my presence could hold at bay, at least for a time, the one following him. That shadow which, in his stiff joints and deaf ears, now stalks him day by day...

It is the third day. At daybreak I shift, feel him in the quilt and have a moment. A moment where I have forgotten and then a moment where I remember and still expect him to stir. Fully expect him to resurrect. Because he could. We have defied everything haven't we? Why not this?

And then I sob. Sob and sob. And rouse myself and carry him in the quilt curled, carry him just under the trees and begin to dig. With a stick, with a flat rock, with my fingers.

Most of the morning until it is deep enough to discourage a bear. Fitting. This was one of our favorite camps in the world. Year after year. If his spirit could look out. To the changing creek, season to season. I lay him in wrapped in the quilt and I say

Goodbye, Bud. You are Jasper. My heart. We are never apart, not here, not there.

Then I scrape back in the dirt.

I spend the rest of the day gathering stones. Cobbles, eggs, heavy rocks. Smoothed and rounded by the stream. I build a mound as high as my chest. In the top I don't know what to put. I take off my old wool sweater. As much his smell as mine. I lay it over the top and pile on more rocks. To dissolve there like a prayer flag his smell and mine washing in the seasons. As if I could cover him.

Then I load up the sled and walk upstream.

[from The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012]

LPK
LiveJournal
8.15.2012

The reviewer said that he didn't need to talk that way. The broken dialogue. Doesn't add anything, the reviewer said. Idiot. I sometimes wonder if they actually read what they review. Probably not. So many books, so little time. And the day job, because nobody can live by reviewing books. I hope the other job isn't teaching lit. Idiot.

The broken dialogue is because he's mostly alone. Just him, his dog, and his misanthropic neighbor. With his thoughts and the feelings that drive them. So under the circumstances, there is no need. To say what is already complete before the words. And then the other thing. The fever which he thinks may have fried his brain. Altered some processess. Left uncertainty about perceptions of things, including self.

So that this is his voice. It is what remains of what he was. So that what he says is what he presently is. And somehow the reviewer missed, or inexplicably discounted, all of that. Idiot. You should probably quit your day job too, depending on what it is. But enough about such fools. Near the beginning, this is what the voice said. The one that survived the apocalypse:

My name is Hig, one name. Big Hig if you need another.

If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I'm not saying I did, it's because the trout are gone every one. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, every one.

The tiger left, the elephant, the apes, the baboon, the cheetah. The titmouse, the frigate bird, the pelican (gray), the collared dove. Sad but. Didn't cry until the last trout swam upriver looking for maybe cooler water.

Melissa, my wife, was an old hippy. Not that old. She looked good. In this story she might have been Eve, but I'm not Adam. I am more like Cain. They didn't have a brother like me.

Did you ever read the Bible? I mean sit down and read it like it was a book? Check out Lamentations. That's where we're at, pretty much. Pretty much lamenting. Pretty much pouring our hearts out like water. [The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012]

Thus, on page one, the protagonist/narrator sets up the story. And does so in the broken diction of a man, a survivor, living in a broken world. Which seems to me the perfect expression his own brokenness and that of the culture and civilization in which language itself is embedded.

Meanwhile, the reviewer in question is likely not listening. He's at his day job. Don't forget the fries with that burger, dude...

LPK
LiveJournal
8.14.2012