the last book I ever read (Linn Ullmann's The Cold Song, excerpt five)

from The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann:

It is impossible to act as if everything is fine, when the dog is straining at the leash and setting the pace and won’t sit when you say Sit or heel when you say Heel. It is there for everyone to see: You’ve got no control over your dog, you’re a spineless little man. Ulysses’s dog didn’t question Ulysses’s authority. Argos didn’t tug and strain at the leash, but waited patiently for his owner for ten long years, while Ulysses himself fought and won a lengthy war and then slowly wended his way home to Ithaca. Homer, Shakespeare, Kafka, Pynchon, Jules Verne, Poe, Steinbeck. They all wrote about dogs. Literary dogs. Click click click. But Jon’s dog just strained at his leash and had no idea how to be a literary dog. Jon’s dog had no idea of how to be a dog, period.