Stepping back ten years to the very humorous and catty Martin Amis’ Yellow Dog. I need the chuckles provided in the four simultaneous stories told with great flair and understanding on these chilly rainy days of mid-January. I’m sitting by a constant fire that kills the chill and warms the bones in what would be a typical English summer day. But I’m not in England, I’m here in Berlin, Maryland near enough to the beach to smell it, though today is not a beach day. It is a reading day and a go the movies day.
Yellow Dog has to be a ribald classic. It is hilarious, outrageously hilarious and bawdy. Joseph Andrews has me laughing so hard and out loud, I’m tearing. Fielding couldn’t have done better, though he does come closer with Tom Jones. Best line: “You’re giving this all up for forty-five pee?” The journey has Xan reviewing his life, his past, his present, what he can of the assault. In the end it is always about our children, why we have them, how we remember their births, and their first steps. We always want to be better than our own parents. We all have to wade through the muck and mire of life, through the porno of life to get to the moments, those rare moments when we finally understand why we have children.
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