Horace Afoot - Hardcover

Excerpted from Horace Afoot: Discounting self-interest and sociobiology, instances of real Samaritanism are rare. I sit and rock on my front porch thinking of the one or two, my own one or two. I am showered. Fresh. Fresh shirt, fresh pants. No shoes. The kid next door has resumed watering the driveway and is studiously ignoring me. His mother pokes her head out the side door to shout an order or two and glances over. My porch is about even with their kitchen door and when dad's pickup isn't pulled all the way up the driveway, they have a clear view across the low chain link fence. I ignore them as generously as I can. But I can sense that the Sheriff's escort and the hospital gown I was wearing when I arrived back home has made an impression and renewed their interest in me. Wacko. I can hear the dinner table talk. Now you stay clear, boy. Hear me? Forks wave. He's wacko.

I lift a leg into the chair, rock with purpose. Into mind pops a line from a poem. If you never do anything for anyone else, you are spared the tragedy of human relationships. I like to think the poet meant it. Unfortunately, I think he was just being ironic. I don't at all agree with the idea that a beneficent and thorough-going altruism can negate the tragedy of human relationships, can somehow reverse and obliterate it. Human relationships are tragic a priori, and the true Samaritan acts, not to change this conditionbut in spite of it. The idea, implanted over the centuries by sentimental Christianity and taken over in our time by political propaganda, advertising and the movies, is that by good deeds we negate this tragic condition and transform it into something better. But there is nothing better. The world is not so neatly divided. Good is not accomplished merely by negation of the bad.

I get up and go inside. The thought merits a phone call.

Horace here.

May I help you?

I'm glad you put it that way.

Excuse me?

Do you like Saint Bernards?

Saint Bernard? I don't know who you're talking about.

Not the saint. The dog. You know, the big shaggy things they use in the Alps to rescue people lost in the snow?

Yes, I know. Those huge slobbery animals, the ones with the little wooden barrels around the neck. What about them?

What do you think about them?

What I think?

Yes.

Not a whole lot. Frankly, I hate dogs. They scare me.

I see. But what about in principle?

Are you calling from the Humane Society?

No.

Because if you are, I'm not interested. I have a cat I took in as a stray and as far as I'm concerned I've done my duty by little furry mammals.

I see.

A dog is out of the question. And a big dog? If you ask me I think keeping gigantic pets is cruel. They need the outdoors. They need open spaces to run in. I don't know whose idea it was to make pets out of them, but in my opinion they have perpetrated a giant cruelty. Your organization should speak out against it.

Against pets?

Against big pets. Yes. I've seen some of the literature you put out. About neutering and overpopulation and such things. But I've never seen anything about pet size. I mean, how big is big enough and how big is too big already? That's what you people should be concerned with. My neighbor down the street keeps a pig! Can you imagine? A pig. He says it's from Vietnam but I don't care where he got it. Keep a pig as a pet? In the house? It's disgusting. You people should do something about it.

I hear pigs are smart.

Smart has nothing to do with it. My grandson is smartbut do I let him climb all over the furniture? To let a pig into the houseI'm sorry. It's disgusting. Now if you don't mind I have to go. Sorry about the dog. I hope you find a nice home for it in Switzerland or someplace.

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"Quietly entertaining, thought-filled. . . . The narrative voice is
particularly congenial--cool and unflappable, often humorous."
--Washington Post Book World

Not since The Moviegoer has a first novel limned the human condition with such originality and subtle insight. A small-town iconoclast who is at once deeply principled and occasionally as absurd as the world he rebels against, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (or Horace) has assumed the name of a Roman poet and has forsworn automobiles, and entertains himself by telephoning strangers to ask them what love is or what they think of St. Bernards. His neighbors in the Midwestern town of Oblivion consider him wacko. This suits Horace just fine, since all he wants in life is "the serenity of not caring."

But people are conspiring to make Horace care about them. There's the dying librarian who finds Horace's morbid curiosity oddly bracing. There's the mysterious woman whom Horace rescues,