Jason Michel’s Confessions of a Black Dog is a novel-length Zen koan. The book follows the adventures of Sam Morgan, who travels through Europe and Thailand. Sam is the main character but the book occasionally switches points of view to other characters.
Everyone in the book is alienated in some way. Some are alienated from other people, some from their country, others from themselves. Everyone in the book has given up hope, at least in the American sense of the word, and are consequently both liberated and downtrodden.
Michel’s novel constantly offers unsolvable dichotomies and metaphysical puzzles. Every action, every word, every character in the book is temporal and fleeting and yet everything is eternal. The main question, unanswerable even to Sam himself, is whether he is going insane or whether there is some objective truth in his ability to communicate with dead people, gods and demons. The reader follows Sam’s line of questioning and, if they are anything like me (and I am nothing if not an “average” reader) begins to feel at some point that the book is providing a definitive answer to the puzzle. But another paragraph or two later, the question is once again muddled and the reader is once again left unsure.
The genius of the book lies in its narrator. At first Dostoyevskian (in that he is omnipresent, is able to relate the exact thoughts and feelings of every character and yet is clearly an actual person, though he never reveals exactly who he is) he slowly reveals himself. The narrator actually becomes the key to understanding the novel, if it’s possible to understand it at all. In short, the narrator is a great revelation, yet he answers nothing.
Confessions of a Black Dog is a book that almost requires multiple readings. The mysteries it raises constantly leading to other questions and puzzles. For days afterward, I carried this book in my mind at work and at home. Highly recommended.
Mini-View with Jason Michel:
What inspired you to write this novel? How long did it take?
The Black Dog did, literally!
I’ve always been fascinated with dreams and the nature of them. When we dream they seem as real to us as when we’re awake. But in our modern know-it-all we just dismiss them as being “just” dreams. Ancient cultures believed that dreaming was a way of communicating with divinity. Certain forms of madness or hallucinogenic drugs can put you in a state of a waking dream. It certainly is interesting. All those gorgeous unconscious parts of ourselves. The hidden things we try to hide from ourselves. I’ve been writing them down for years.
So, I really dreamt most of the dreams in the book, including the one of the Black Dog and the elephants.
I had that one while I lived in Thailand. The reverie was so vivid and damned emotional that I just could not shake it out of my system and one day I just started writing a short story about it. That story ended up being published in Scarecrow magazine, a couple of years later when I finally returned to England.
But, I’m afraid the damned beast just wasn’t finished with me and so I continued to write and to add to it. The parts of the book that took place in Thailand were mostly written there and put aside as I always felt they were incomplete but I knew that there was some kind of connection to the Black Dog and it wasn’t until I finally came to France that it all came together and I finished the book here.
So, about three years of birth pangs.
What character do you most identify with?
Well, the book is partly autobiographical. Most of the characters are real people or conglomerates of them. A lot of those events actually happened, too. Not all, of course (It is a piece of fiction).
Which ones did?
I’ll leave the reader to decide.
So, I would have to say that Sam is a big part of me, but I’m not sure if I like him. He’s the flight in the “fight or flight” reaction. As a close friend once asked me, “What the fuck are you escaping from?”
I guess this book is my answer.
And the Black Dog, he’s definitely in me. We’ve had lots of chats over many bottles of wine!
Why did you decide to write the narrator the way you did?
I didn’t decide, it just seemed to fit. I don’t really decide much when I write. What comes out, comes out to a certain extent. But, I think it comes back to the nature of dreams. Sometimes we are ourselves, other times we can observe ourselves in them. I don’t want to say too much as I’d prefer people to make their own minds up.
Reviewed by Pat King
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