"This will be his earliest memory," The Story of Edgar Sawtelle says about its title character. "Red light, morning light. High ceiling canted overhead. Lazy click of toenails on wood. Between the honey-colored slats of the crib a whiskery muzzle slides forward until its cheeks pull back and a row of dainty front teeth bare themselves in a ridiculous grin."
That’s a good way for a boy to meet a dog. It’s an even better way to get acquainted with the most enchanting debut novel of the summer. Written over a decade by the heretofore unknown David Wroblewski and arriving as a bolt from the blue, this is a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana. Absent the few dates and pop-cultural references that place the book somewhere in the post-Eisenhower 20th century, its unmannered style, emotional heft and sweeping ambition would keep it timeless.
Wroblewski happens to have borrowed, here and there, from Rudyard Kipling, William Shakespeare, Richard Russo, Stephen King and the 1934 dog-breeding book Working Dogs. And he writes as if he grew up in a library well-stocked with great novels of the prairie. But the voice heard in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle sounds like no one else’s as this book creates its enthralling, warmly idiosyncratic story.
The narrative is of course centered on Edgar, a boy who reminds himself of Kipling’s Mowgli (from The Jungle Book) in his uncanny ability to communicate with dogs. Dog breeding is the family avocation. In the Sawtelles’ remote Wisconsin kennel, “they had photographs of every dog they’d ever raised but none of themselves.”
Wroblewski puts Edgar on a warm, cozy, paw-boxing basis with the Sawtelle dogs by rendering the boy mute from birth. Although Edgar’s condition is a terrible liability at certain crucial plot junctures, it is more often a blessing. Edgar speaks his own private sign language to people and dogs alike. He has no trouble making himself understood to his loved ones, whether they have two legs or four.
And Wroblewski has a deft, natural way of conveying Edgar’s relationship to language. Edgar speaks as clearly as any of the book’s other human characters do. It’s just that his dialogue, unlike theirs, is presented without quotation marks. Within the Sawtelle household, Edgar is by far the easiest person to understand.
That’s because Wroblewski gives this family the Hamlet treatment, in general terms though not slavishly derivative ones. Edgar adores his mother, Trudy, and resents his long-lost uncle, Claude. When an unhappy fate befalls Edgar’s father, Gar, the suspicions of this now 14-year-old boy are aroused. Trouble ensues. But The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is by no means Hamlet with hounds. This book’s brief encounters with prophecy and the supernatural have as much to do with King’s Maine as they do with Shakespeare’s Denmark.
In a book that pays rapt attention to the power of communication, there are things that Edgar at first simply cannot understand. His parents are beguiling but mysterious. (The only answer Edgar can get to the question of how they met is: “In a good way. You’d only be disappointed in the details.”)
One of Wroblewski’s most impressive accomplishments here is to exert a strong, seemingly effortless gravitational pull. The reader who has no interest in dogs, boys or Oedipal conflicts of the north woods of Wisconsin will nonetheless find these things irresistible.
Even when he more openly manipulates his characters, this fine new author (who, in another life, has a career developing software) invests their actions with intense emotion. When the dogs make a home for themselves in a new place, they do it with heart and soul.
“As they worked, they put the sky in place above, the trees in the ground,” the book says, describing one of Edgar’s training sessions. “They invented color and air and scent and gravity.” And in a touch that is by no means unexpected, once Wroblewski’s world has been entered and embraced, this book’s saddest farewell ends a profound man-dog relationship. Not even Hamlet could have imagined the strength of their loyalty or the depths of their sorrow.
Last week, Viola Zhou published a marvelous deep dive into the culture clash between Taiwanese boss mentality and American labor practices at the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) plant in Arizona in Rest of World. “The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company,” while the Taiwanese said American workers aren’t dedicated. The article is a delight, but what it is depicting is the clash between a work culture that offers employee autonomy and at least nods at work-life balance, and one that runs on hierarchical discipline enforced by chickenshit. And it runs on chickenshit because chickenshit is a cultural
By far the most jarring of the new appointments for the incoming administration is that of Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) to head the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). That is a huge demotion for one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tseng has one of the most impressive resumes in the party. He was very active during the Wild Lily Movement and his generation is now the one taking power. He has served in many of the requisite government, party and elected positions to build out a solid political profile. Elected as mayor of Taoyuan as part of the
Moritz Mieg, 22, lay face down in the rubble, the ground shaking violently beneath him. Boulders crashed down around him, some stones hitting his back. “I just hoped that it would be one big hit and over, because I did not want to be hit nearly to death and then have to slowly die,” the student from Germany tells Taipei Times. MORNING WALK Early on April 3, Mieg set out on a scenic hike through Taroko Gorge in Hualien County (花蓮). It was a fine day for it. Little did he know that the complex intersection of tectonic plates Taiwan sits
When picturing Tainan, what typically comes to mind is charming alleyways, Japanese architecture and world-class cuisine. But look beyond the fray, through stained glass windows and sliding bookcases, and there exists a thriving speakeasy subculture, where innovative mixologists ply their trade, serving exquisite concoctions and unique flavor profiles to rival any city in Taiwan. Speakeasies hail from the prohibition era of 1920s America. When alcohol was outlawed, people took their business to hidden establishments; requiring patrons to use hushed tones — speak easy — to conceal their illegal activities. Nowadays legal, speakeasy bars are simply hidden bars, often found behind bookcases