No One's Devil Dog
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: No One's Devil Dog is a collection of stories which celebrate the muddling journeys of five lonely souls. In "Karaoke Night," Stanley means to confess his love to Sarah, "blond and lovely, perfect vision of a barmaid angel," but before he can, he must sing a Johnny Cash duet with a massive blind shot-putter and negotiate the hazy interior of a crowded Nova Scotia pub. In "Lo Siento," Evan, a graduate student, surly radical, and veteran of the WTO riots in Seattle, sees a simple errand become a bibulous descent into the excess and carnival night life of a Midwestern college town. "Doomsday on Mars" finds Hank, an unprepossessing newspaper press manager, dreaming science fiction stories and plays after having Viagra-enhanced sex with his unhappy wife. In "No One's Devil Dog," a marine warrant officer resolves to commit suicide by cop in front of the national media as a final gesture in his struggle against the faceless powers that shape his life. Lastly there is "Coupe de Ville" where in Jacob convinces Norman to slip away from the other old folks and take one last drive across town in Jacob's vintage Cadillac convertible. The stories in No One's Devil Dog aspire to discover a humor and irony born of compassion and marked by a reverence for the human condition. The collection as a whole explores the possibility of human desire and disappointment in the careful expansion and scrutiny of critical moments in the humble exploits of unlikely heroes.
DOI: 10.25777/y8s6-yh06
Author: Hillery, Matthew C.
Institution: Old Dominion University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6927301275
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