Once you get past the drool and the smell, dogs really are lovable creatures. Everyone knows that. But did you know that about humans?
McSweeny's contributor and O. Henry award-winning short story writer Arthur Bradford trots out tales of weirdo Homo sapiens and beasts that not only blur the line between the two, but illustrate in a subtle manner how people resemble canines — and in surprisingly good ways. Dogwalker appears on the surface as yet another freak-show assortment of oddball characters in sterile, dilapidated surroundings, but surprises us with tenderness and sentimentality. Bradford yanks at our heartstrings in a way that's never overwrought. Like a patient pet owner, he guides the reader gently with spare prose and vivid and, at times, grotesque imagery.
The stories are more character- than plot-driven, with recurring portrayals of personality and physical deformities. In "Mollusks," a hapless, compulsive junk collector finds a huge slug that he's hell-bent on keeping. But as the slimy creature begins to come between him and his wife, he decides to let the spineless creature go free in an act of love declaration. A line from this story aptly describes the theme of Dogwalker throughout: "Disgusting does not mean undesirable."
Bradford strides at a weirdly mesmerizing slow pace, but once you get to the second-to-the-last story, "Dogs," things picks up considerably and you find yourself in a bizarre-o dreamworld that combines the frenetic literary style of Vonnegut with the comic pathos of Michigan J. Frog, that singing-amphibian Looney Tunes character. Let's not give away too much here. Suffice it to say it involves mating between species, a man the size of a muskrat and a woman aided by an iron lung. This over-the-top piece stands way apart from the rest and resonates with Bradford's stirring humanity.
In all of the stories in Dogwalker, Bradford shows us how we humans are helpless and faltering in the face of our needs and desires, and how we ultimately want to be loyal to the ones we love.
How very dog-like of us!
—Julie Garisto
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2002.