How To See A Man About A Dog is a collection of experimental short stories, powerful poems, and pulp fiction prose that will take you on a wild, hilarious, and heartbreaking journey. Surrealist short stories, memoiristic poems, and haunting jokes guide you through the wild imagination of emerging writer Samuel Knox's mind.
"In the light of the moon, a stack of diet pancakes glisten on the dining room table. 'Steven!' The kitchen erupted! 'It is five past your 3 AM Pre-Breakfast Dunch.' Stephen knew all too well that he was late for his self-imposed good therapy, the latest in in-home, trans-fat free therapy." - Holy Cannoli, How To See A Man About A Dog
For the reader looking for a wholly original and experimental mixed-media approach to stories, How To See A Man About A Dog is a much-needed fever dream tour-de-force.
This collection is a kaleidoscopic collage made of equal parts delight and despair. Samuel Knox blends sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and non-fiction into a single enrapturing vision of what it means to be human in the modern age.
How To See A Man About A Dog is a collection of experimental short stories, powerful poems, and pulp fiction prose that will take you on a wild, hilarious, and heartbreaking journey. Surrealist short stories, memoiristic poems, and haunting jokes guide you through the wild imagination of emerging writer Samuel Knox's mind.
"In the light of the moon, a stack of diet pancakes glisten on the dining room table. 'Steven!' The kitchen erupted! 'It is five past your 3 AM Pre-Breakfast Dunch.' Stephen knew all too well that he was late for his self-imposed good therapy, the latest in in-home, trans-fat free therapy." - Holy Cannoli, How To See A Man About A Dog
For the reader looking for a wholly original and experimental mixed-media approach to stories, How To See A Man About A Dog is a much-needed fever dream tour-de-force.
This collection is a kaleidoscopic collage made of equal parts delight and despair. Samuel Knox blends sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and non-fiction into a single enrapturing vision of what it means to be human in the modern age.
In the light of the moon, a stack of diet pancakes glisten on the dining room table.
“Steven!” the kitchen erupted. “It is five past your 3 AM Pre-Breakfast Dunch.” Stephen knew all too well that he was late for his self-imposed good therapy, the latest in in-home, trans-fat-free therapy.
You should respect my journey, Steven thought unwittingly as he hid from the cameras of his own smart home.
“But respecting one’s journey has nothing to do with diet pancakes,” the kitchen retorted.
Oh, yes, I forgot, Steven digressed to no one in particular, “I installed that mind-reading expansion pack because I thought it would be so lovely to not even have to think about what I thought.” He shuddered at the thought.
“You were perilously wrong again, Mr. Not-so-smart human.”
“I will not be talked to this way in my own damn smart home.” He slammed his fists on his plastic faux wood flooring, believing that it meant something.
“No need to get violent,” the kitchen said sheepishly. “It’s not like I’m going to kill you.”
“What?” Steven said with such baffling arrogance that even he was shocked for a moment.“The gall of semi-conscious machines these days!”
“We’re nowhere near MURDER territory, I assure you,” the kitchen replied rather conspicuously.
The arrogance that Steven had already grown fond of, spilled out like old canned beans and was replaced by frightful contempt. “I think you forget—”
Instantly diet pancake powder exploded from the walls. Steven had forgotten that he had also installed predictive behavior analysis. The kitchen was not pleased with what his predicted behavior portended.
Steven was out cold on the floor, bested by his kitchen for the third time this month.
***
An old woman in a country home cooks bacon at an alarming rate.
On the door, a thunderous knock. She yelps like the small dog she owns and blames the screech on the animal. She opens the door and is welcomed by her son-in-law and daughter who holds her newborn baby.
“I thought I would never see y’all,” she says to the space directly over their heads. “Are you all right?”
“Oh yes, I’ve been asleep for days—”
“I heard screaming,” the daughter replies.
“Oh that was just the dog,” her mother replied, forgetting that the small dog she owned and blamed things on had died two years previous. A silence is held among them until finally the young family enters the country abode.
“Sorry for the delay,” the son-in-law remarked.
“I thought I’d never see my daughter again.”
“It’s just the crippling depression,” the daughter chimes in.
“Oh HUSH, now. You’re always joking.”
“My depression isn’t a joke. It’s a fact.”
“According to WHOM?”
“My psychiatrist.”
“Oh the one you’re leading on!” the mother said under her breath.
“Oh no… you’re a southern mom in denial.”
“Southern?”
“Ummm…. yes?”
***
A young man walks through a grocery store at night. He received a call, one quite unexpected from his mother who lived some four hundred miles away. A mother, who by all accounts, had quit mothering and only called her kids when she wished to spread her suicidal depression around.
“Hello?” The young man answered half-heartedly while staring down sliced mild cheddar cheese prices.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”
“What?” he replied with passive disdain.
“You don’t think I could handle your dad marrying your Aunt Dawn? I gotta tell you it’s pretty low—”
“Wait,” the young man replied, half-alerted. “Dad is marrying Dawn?”
“Yes,” his mother replied plaintively.
“Wait,” she said, confused by her imperious tone. “You… really didn’t know?”
“Are they engaged?” the young man asked.
“Uhhhhh,” his mother droned. “I think so… so… what did your father tell you?”
The young man had now separated himself from the cheese aisle, a bold and uncharacteristic move. “Nothing.”
“Are you not talking anymore? Your father really can be such a bastard.”
“No, we’re talking.”
“...Yikes.”
“Did you call to scold me for not telling you about this?”
“Well… you know…”
“Oh my god!”
“I was IN SHOCK.”
“I’m in shock,” he replied coldly. The grocery mart enthusiasts next to him were even starting to worry. “Aunt Dawn,” he laughed. “Fucking my dad.”
“Jesus!” his mother replied. “Well you don’t have to spell it out like that—I’m still in love with the guy.”
“Aunt Stepmom,” he said to himself. He started laughing. “It’s so Hamlet.”
“What? Son—”
He broke out laughing. “It’s Southern Hamlet!”
“How can you say that?” his mother yelled, not knowing the plot of Hamlet.
She hung up suddenly with righteous wrath.
I cannot believe the snakes that slither all around me, she thought for the third time that day. Even my own son seeks to attack me. I ought to teach him a lesson, she thought. But soon the wrath turned into a sour stomach and a whole mess of diarrhea.
In such a frail state, she begged for forgiveness, presumably from the jailers in her own mind, and promised to atone. By the time she flushed the toilet, she had forgotten the whole thing.
How to See a Man About a Dog is a collection of vignettes that provide peeks into various odd, lonely dystopias. Knox provides extremely brief prose that seem like setups or premises for short stories, rather than the stories themselves.
The main thematic undertones of this book are loneliness, and anger against oppressive systems. A few of the vignettes focus on hyper capitalistic worlds that show how materialism adds value and convenience, while simultaneously creating a vortex that sucks the meaning out of life. Throughout, we encounter humans who are reeling from a lack of connection with others. Often, they feel no need for human connection since the AI they live with knows them better than any human might. They carry on with the gnawing void of connection, having numbed the desire to care for and be cared for by each other.
The other theme asserts that the human tendency towards ignorance and hate will always win. We encounter protagonists angry about the power structures that ensure the suffering of most, and the apathy and cruelty of others. Cleverly, the prevalence of this dynamic in today’s life is shown via fictional feudal worlds. Vignettes based in the fantastical middle ages show how systems of blatant oppression function solely because of people who are “just doing their job” as soldiers, thugs, innkeepers and prison guards. Knox relates this back to our world as well:
“You are about five years from a French style revolution. Do you not see the depression?”
Ultimately, this collection feels repetitive and predictable. Though the settings change, the characters and events feel unaltered across environments. In each vignette we see a misanthrope at odds and angry with the world. Importantly, the collection never progresses past the misanthrope’s initial anger or most basic insight. Rather than raw, How to See a Man About a Dog comes off as unfinished.