Dingus Dreaming
Alex Vardamis
review by Walter Gourlay

“Call me Dingus,” the book begins. “I write biting op-eds.” Dingus, we discover, is a dog. A canine dog. In other words, a mutt.

“I didn’t choose to be a dog,” he assures us. “Life is unfair.” Dingus, part dingo and part – what? A mongrel unsure of his ancestry, but determined not to be subservient to man or beast.

Dingus has been rescued from an animal shelter by a soft-hearted woman living in Carmel, California. While undergoing house training, he is clobbered by a copy of The New York Times and discovers he understands human speech and knows how to read. Literacy, he decides, is power. A canine Candide, he embarks on a frantic search through world literature to find the meaning of life, and in particular the place of a dog’s life in the cosmos. He haunts libraries and bookstores, absorbing everything he can find, mostly by chewing on the pages. He comes to the conclusion that all great literature has been written by dogs.

Like archy in Don Marquis’s classic about the literate cockroach, Dingus discovers he can type, so he uses a computer to go on the Web. He becomes a writer, and learns to beware of dangling participles, and to revise, revise, revise, always in search of the perfect sentence. He denounces such human atrocities as euthanasia, castration, spaying and sterilization.

When he chews on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn he gets into trouble and lands at the vet’s, where he suffers the indignity of castration. Dingus wishes he could do the same to his “owner”, Fred, who has “the heart and soul of a developer.”

He tries hard to understand human society. He chews on The Great Gatsby, hoping to learn how to deal with the rich and frivolous in Pebble Beach. Dingus is “discovered” by Clint Eastwood, who takes him to Hollywood for a screen test. Dingus flunks it.

When he meets Sally, an ultra-aristocratic purebred Saluki, he falls in love. Together they discuss religion and the presence of a Supreme Authority.

With his girl friend Paula, a “Porn Queen”, who is into Hinduism, Dingus ponders the duality of good and evil. By reading Steinbeck, he comes to the conclusion that he is the ultimate mongrel, not bred for any purpose. The ur-dog. He figures this means he has free will.

At the end of the novel, Dingus is still questioning. He appends a list of suggested readings, including such notables as Yukon Buck London, Black Dog Hemingway, Scottie Fitzgerald, Horny Hank Miller – you get the idea. Literature always nourishes, Dingus reminds us, but beware, it can stick in your gut for a long long time.

This highly literate satire is a lot of fun to read, is often hilarious, and may just make you think twice about fate, free will, and the place of dogs in the cosmos.

As for Dingus, he’s unforgettable.