(Spoilers)
For our discussion on Tuesday, April 18, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. The story mostly takes place in the Puget Sound area and is told from the first-person point of view of Enzo, a dog whose guardian is Denny. The book covers some philosophy of auto racing, family tragedy and conflict, loss, pain, and redemption. I thought it got a bit overly profound and emotional at times. But it also has humor and Enzo's unique perspective as a dog is interesting. It is certainly more introspective than that of Chet in Dog On It by Spencer Quin.
The book mentions several places in Washington State, some new to me and others familiar. Denny picks Enzo as a puppy out of a pack of them "behind a barn in a smelly field near a town in Eastern Washington called Spangle." (p. 9) I hadn't heard of Spangle before. It's a real place in Spokane County. From there Denny moves Enzo "to a Seattle neighborhood called Leschi where he lived in a little apartment he rented on Lake Washington." (p. 15) That was probably before it got so expensive to live in Seattle. Denny's in-laws live on Mercer Island, an area I've visited many times. Enzo observes that for "having such a beautiful place to live, they were among the most unhappy people I've ever met." (p. 84) Enzo later narrates, "In February, the black pit of winter, we went on a trip to north-central Washington, to an area called the Methow Valley." (p. 13) I've heard of Methow Valley since some of my ancestors lived there. Other relatable references include Enzo describing that he and Denny "fell out of the sky and into the verdant fields north of Sacramento." (p. 150) Skip the car washer washes "an immaculately cared-for British racing green BMW 2002." (p. 188-189)
I learned some things from the book, mostly about racing but also about having children. Denny's wife Eve learns to make her unborn baby "move around by drinking orange juice." (p. 23) After she is born, Zoe clumps "along in her first pair of waffle stompers." (p. 94) Waffle stompers is slang for boots or shoes with a big tread resembling a waffle iron. Enzo can get very profound with his inner monologue. He describes memory as "time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember." (p. 13) Enzo believes "that which we manifest is before is; we are creators of our own destiny." (p. 43)
Much of what Enzo observes has to do with being a dog. He believes that dogs and women understand pain "because we tap into pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release." (p. 62-63) Denny's friend Mike takes Enzo to Denny's house and asks Enzo, "Where's your dog?" Enzo says to himself, "I didn't want to admit that I still slept with a stuffed animal, but I did. I loved that dog." (p. 104) As a house pet, Enzo is left alone a lot. He believes that "being alone is a neutral state; it is like a blind fish at the bottom of the ocean without eyes, and therefore without judgment. Is it possible? That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me." (p. 192)
Enzo believes he will become a human in the next life. He explains, "Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street." (p. 101) Sometimes it feels like that at book club discussions. Enzo recommends, "Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories." (p. 102) But Enzo does have some doubts about becoming a human. He marvels at "how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than what is expedient." (p. 122) But later Enzo feels "strangely anxious … in a very human way. People are always worried about what's happening next. They often find it difficult to stand still, to occupy the now without worrying about the future. People are not generally satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have." (p. 188)
In 2014, the school board of Highland Park Independent School District in Highland Park, Texas (Dallas area) voted to ban the book. Students had been reading it for 10th grade English. They banned the book because of a scene involving an underage girl who tries to force herself upon the main human character and later accuses him of rape. The scene made parents so uncomfortable that they bombarded school officials with furious emails and vented at a packed school board meeting. The parents said that high school students should not be exposed to some of the hardships of adulthood. The author, Garth Stein, responded by defending teaching the book to 10th graders and said the controversial subject matter was taken quite seriously. He further elaborated, "I think in 10th grade it's time to be able to have these discussions about adult subject matter and … do so in a thoughtful way … The objective is to raise awareness by having a discussion about these things rather than suppressing the discussions … They should be teaching students to raise those objections themselves." I thought it was interesting that Stein has adapted The Art of Racing in the Rain into a separate book for young people titled Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog. I wonder if the scene to which the parents objected in the original book was altered or removed in the adaptation.
We had a good discussion at Doyle's Public House on Tuesday, April 18. Nine people attended including two new people who would go on to attend several more. A Doyle's patron did bring their Chet's guy, though they didn't participate in the discussion. I had the lamb and rice bowl without tzatziki sauce that was pretty good. One participant felt that the book could have dealt with the issue of sexual assault in a more nuanced way. At the end of the discussion I announced that the book for the next month of May 2017 would be The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. A discussion participant mentioned what they felt was a similar book: White Teeth by Zadie Smith.
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