Afterglow: A Dog Memoir

By Eileen Myles

Skinny's Book of the Year, 2018
In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly made an indelible impact on the writer's way of being. Over the course of sixteen years together, Myles was devoted to the pit bull and their linked quality of life. And starting from the emptiness following Rosie's death, Afterglow launches a playful and incisive investigation into the mostly mutually beneficial, sometimes reprehensible power dynamics between pet and pet-owner. At the same time, it reimagines Myles's experiences with alcoholism and recovery, intimacy and mourning, celebrity and politics, spirituality and family history, while joyously transcending the parameters of memoir.
Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles's childhood puppet, to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull; from shimmering poetic transcriptions of video footage taken during their walks, to Rosie's final enlightened narration from the afterlife, this totally singular text combines elements of science fiction, screenplay, monologue, and lucid memory to get to the heart of how and why we dedicate our existence to our dogs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press UK
• Release date: Feb 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781611859430

Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles (they/them, b. 1949) is a poet, novelist, and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has made them one of the most recognized writers of their generation. Pathetic Literature, which they edited, came out in fall 2022. a “Working Life,” their newest collection of poems, is out now. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.

Reviews for Afterglow

[dbsovereign · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! This book is stunning - ostensibly a tribute to her dog and their relationship, it manages to be that and a meditation on life, living in the present, death, poetry and the existential condition [among other things]. Multi-layered and using multiple literary techniques, this poetic exploration is both luminous and profane. At turns somber and laugh-out-loud hilarious, parts of the book can tend to seem rather inscrutable, but not in a particularly difficult way. Though the reader can still glean something from these formidable parts - the meaning may allude them. "...the proper refuge will have occurred and everyone will be beginning to live slowly in the right time with themselves. Because there is no kingdom now and the end is only when the road has invited us to leave."

[lisapeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think a lot of the time poets' prose efforts can be so packed that they're by nature uneven—I guess you can say the same for poetry as well. That's definitely the case with this book, and honestly I get the feeling that Eileen Myles would be just fine with the idea of taking what you want and leaving the rest. Some of it is just gorgeous, lyrical, madly associative and evocative. And some of it is just too dense or esoteric for the likes of me, and I was perfectly happy to read along and let some of it settle to the bottom in order for the stuff that resonated for me to rise. Although Myles definitely stretches the definition of "a dog memoir," there is some marvelous writing on dogs, and about dog ownership in particular—both the intense scrutiny that's borne out of love and also the dilemma of all that tenderness and adoration weighed against the wrongness of leading another living being around by the neck. I love Myles's directness, often bordering on crudeness, and the love that shines through it all for her Rosie—"the physiognomy of dearness unsurpassed." This one takes a little suspension of the need to get every sentence, but the rewards are great.