A person who is doing literary writing must deal in emotion-charged symbols – and so you end up writing about things like death and lions and sacramental meals, perhaps because those are emotional things that wake certain feelings in the deep spring of the individual. I’m using it as I have to, to engage and stir the reader’s emotions. And if fiction doesn’t do that, then it’s failed. That’s the purpose of fiction.
“
The breeder of the black German shepherds said her kennel was in Sedona, a place known far and wide for its good vibrations, its harmonic integrity. But the kennel was actually in Jerome, thirty miles away, an unnerving ghost town set above a vast pit from which copper ore had been extracted. The largest building in Jerome was the old sanatorium, now derelict. The town’s historian insisted that it had served all the population in the town’s heyday, not just the diseased and troubled, and that babies had even been born there.
In any case, the dog coming from Jerome rather than Sedona was telling, people thought.
Another something that could be the basis of the dog’s behavior was the fact that her mistress always wore sunglasses, day and night. Like everybody else, the dog never got to see her eyes. When the woman had people over, she placed a big bowl of sunglasses outside the front door and everyone put on a pair before entering. It was easier than locking the dog in the bedroom.
“
Joy Williams | “Noche”