Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short
story, the novella is generally unrecognized by
academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form
beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers.
In The ART OF THE NOVELLA series, Melville House
celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners
with titles that are, in many instances, presented in
book form for the first time. The first talking-dog
story in Western literature--from the writer generally
acknowledged, alongside William Shakespeare, as the
founding father of modern literature, no less? Indeed,
''The Dialogue of the Dogs ''features, in a condensed,
powerful version, all the traits the author of Don
Quixote is famous for: It's a picaresque rich in bawdy
humor, social satire, and fantasy, and uses tactics that
were innovative at the time, such as the philandering
husband who, given syphilis by his wife, is
hospitalized. Late one feverish night he overhears the
hospital's guard dogs telling each other their life's
story--a wickedly ironic tale within the tale within the
tale, wherein the two virtuous canines find themselves
victim, time and again, to deceitful, corrupt humanity.
Here in a sparkling new translation, the parody of a
Greek dialogue is so entertaining it belies the
stunningly prescient sophistication of this
novella--that it is a story about telling stories, and
about creating a new way to discuss morality that isn't
rooted in empiricism. In short, it's a masterful work
that flies in the face of the forms and ethics of its
time...and perhaps ours as well. |
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