Melissa Broder Reviews Eileen Myles's Afterglow (a dog memoir)

Get thee to the new issue of Bookforum for Melissa Broder's review of Eileen Myles's Afterglow (a dog memoir) (Grove Press, like now). "Afterglow portrays a complex and often hilarious relationship between two animals, characterized by love and a deep interrogation of power, creativity, and point of view," writes Broder of the long-awaited experimental tale of a writer and their companion animal, Rosie the dog.

“I wrote virtually every poem by Eileen Myles from 1990 to 2006 and she wrote nothing nothing in the intervening months, no years,” Rosie notes in one of her droll critiques, attuned to vanity and projection. “Humans are always looking for . . . the obvious. Very low, very base, very banal kinds of puppetry. They can’t imagine their own animation ending. . . . They decide their children will be their future puppets. They build institutions and write books to carry on their names.”

Of all the human foibles examined in the book, it is our inability to live in a moment—for the moment—that is most profoundly explored. Some writers portray the experience of raising a child as an opportunity to live a second childhood, at least vicariously. For Myles, it’s a dog that becomes the surrogate, or perhaps the midwife, for a sort of vicarious enlightenment. Myles had an epiphany while caring for Rosie at the end of the dog’s life: “One evening I was feeling a little extra naked after describing the ritual of mopping her piss and I thought that’s it. She’s god. And I felt so calm. I’ve found god now. . . . She’s dying & I’m watching her. I’m not thinking about it.”

Yet is there such a thing as vicarious enlightenment? How close can we get to the immaculate dissolution that we crave—empty of thought, living directly rather than analyzing—or as Myles calls it, “the sea”? In Afterglow, Myles describes a lifetime of vain attempts to reach it...

Find out at Bookforum.