I didn’t get to do much reading for the past couple years because I was in college and not a lot of learning goes on there. That’s not true, learning goes on, but I’m pissed and taking my frustration out on it. I acquired a lot of books as gifts from my parents and girlfriend during this time and they stacked up one beside the other on my book shelf.

My girlfriend hounded me about not reading them for weeks. My guilt swelled and I began to read. I decided to start on the left side of the shelf and move right. This meant the first book was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I should have known not to get it because it has Oprah’s seal of approval on the front and, as is widely accepted, she is the devil. It’s not so much that she’s boring and predictable and does terrible interviews and is generally annoying, it’s that she’s amassed a cult like following of people who’ll do whatever she says. For instance, they’ll give books five-star ratings because Oprah’s satanic iconography defaces the cover of a book.

I should have known not to get it because it’s the first novel of a guy straight out of an MFA writing program and it’s about dogs. Let me summarize the book for you now and then I’ll continue. David Wroblewski thought one day, “Hey. I had two dogs once that were really awesome. Wouldn’t it be cool if I wrote 562 pages about dogs.” He didn’t really have a story to go along with his dog fan-fiction. I mean, he did, there’s 562 pages, but nothing is resolved. Nothing.

I should have known not to get it because Stephen King wrote a nice little blurb on the back of it about how amazing the story is and that he’d read it again. And, Stephen King wrote that shitty book about that fucking clown that was a spider. That was a stupid fucking piece of work. In case you were on the fence and weren’t sure, I’m telling you, it fucking sucked.

The book is a long string of the words Wroblewski learned in his MFA program coupled with short poems he likely wrote about nature and later repurposed for this book.

The ending… it’s not even an ending it’s literally like he just stopped typing and sent it to the publisher and they printed it. I don’t care if in the end everyone died, or lived or if all the dogs became zombies so long as it’s explained. Except it isn’t. Nothing is explained. This book is Hamlet for dogs. Two of the characters are even named Trudy and Claude. At the same time it isn’t Hamlet because clearly Wroblewski started to read Hamlet and couldn’t finish for lack of puppies licking people’s faces. So he thought, “Fuck you Shakespeare. My Hamlet will have puppies.”

This book is awful. I’m never buying a marked book again, or one by a writing student.