"Jack and the Mad Dog" by Tony Early Originally published in the October 1, 2012 issue of The New Yorker.
Tony Earley has been writing short stories for some time now, but I’ve never read his work before. I’m looking forward to this one and will post my thoughts here soon. In the meantime, leave any comments you may have below.
Of all the many years I read the short stories there were two that stand out with their originality and total weirdness. This is the third one. O loved it as I grew up loving fairy tales.Growing up without TV, movies, it was all this magic in folk tales.Thanks for publishing this.
Sorry about the “O”. Meant to be “I’.
Not bad.
I read it as an allegory about becoming an adult and looking back with shame on some of the things you did as a child.
Strikes me as Reflexive Deconstruction 101 but entertaining enough.
I know I’m too late to the party for Miriam to read this, but you’re hitting on the key point of where I struggled with this piece. As someone who has seen “Into the Woods” and read “Fables” (to say nothing of the thematic style of Neil Gaiman or Tom Stoppard), I didn’t find there to be *anything* original about this piece, and while I kept waiting for the allegory Dan speaks of to develop, the only thing I really got was an awareness that Earley was attempting to say something really general about how the mythic holds up in the light of realism.
Trevor, if you’re still planning to catch up, I’ll be interested to see which side you fall on, as I’m sure you’ve been exposed to this type of literary fiction before. More thoughts, as always, here: http://bit.ly/UAUzY7
Oh, I’ll get back here eventually, Aaron. My goal is to pick up the slack I’ve created over the past few years — and I’ll really do it, someday :) .