Seven different ways of looking at Dog Days
Flying back from a conference today, I finished Ana Marie Cox’s Dog Days. Here are my seven different ways of looking at the book: 1) It is the perfect airplane book — provided you don’t have a prurient ten-year old reading over your shoulder; 2) Chistopher Buckley was right and P.J. O’Rourke was wrong — ...
Flying back from a conference today, I finished Ana Marie Cox's Dog Days. Here are my seven different ways of looking at the book: 1) It is the perfect airplane book -- provided you don't have a prurient ten-year old reading over your shoulder; 2) Chistopher Buckley was right and P.J. O'Rourke was wrong -- as DC novels of manners go, it's pretty decent. 3) Weirdly, the novel it most reminded me of was Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City -- except for the fact that the protagonist is a woman instead of a man, the book is set in DC rather than in New York, and the characters are addicted to Blackberries rather than cocaine. 4) I'm pretty sure Oprah will not be choosing Dog Days as her book of the month -- although it would certainly make people forget her connection to James Frey. This is a shame -- I, for one, would pay cash money to have Oprah ask Ms. Cox, "So, Ana, when did you first get interested in a@#-f%&?ing as a trope for your fiction?" 5) The single truest line I read in the book was this observation about DC: "You have to remember, no one here will ever admit they don't know something. It's considered a major faux pas to admit being uninformed." 6) I can't figure out why, after creating a fictional blog for the book called Capitolette, the book publicists didn't get more creative with the actual URL. 7) I hereby copyright the name "Eva Marie Dix" for that roman a clef I'll eventually write.
Flying back from a conference today, I finished Ana Marie Cox’s Dog Days. Here are my seven different ways of looking at the book:
1) It is the perfect airplane book — provided you don’t have a prurient ten-year old reading over your shoulder; 2) Chistopher Buckley was right and P.J. O’Rourke was wrong — as DC novels of manners go, it’s pretty decent. 3) Weirdly, the novel it most reminded me of was Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City — except for the fact that the protagonist is a woman instead of a man, the book is set in DC rather than in New York, and the characters are addicted to Blackberries rather than cocaine. 4) I’m pretty sure Oprah will not be choosing Dog Days as her book of the month — although it would certainly make people forget her connection to James Frey. This is a shame — I, for one, would pay cash money to have Oprah ask Ms. Cox, “So, Ana, when did you first get interested in a@#-f%&?ing as a trope for your fiction?” 5) The single truest line I read in the book was this observation about DC: “You have to remember, no one here will ever admit they don’t know something. It’s considered a major faux pas to admit being uninformed.” 6) I can’t figure out why, after creating a fictional blog for the book called Capitolette, the book publicists didn’t get more creative with the actual URL. 7) I hereby copyright the name “Eva Marie Dix” for that roman a clef I’ll eventually write.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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