Only an author who creates unabashedly autobiographical protagonists with a penchant for self-destructive relationships and equally dangerous outdoor adventure would boldly pen a novel featuring a risky 12 - count 'em, 12 - first-person narrators. More perilous still, two of those voices belong to dogs, and one to a cat.
Pam Houston climbed into the literary limelight in 1992 with a collection of her short stories, "Cowboys Are My Weakness," about women in love with the West and inappropriate men. Houston's latest book, "Sight Hound," is the story of Rae and her dog Dante, an Irish wolfhound who practices Buddhism and teaches his human that love is more powerful than fear.
When Houston was writing "Sight Hound," she didn't view either the plethora of narrators or having animals tell the tale as potential pitfalls. "It seemed totally natural until afterward," Houston said. "Denial is the way writers protect themselves from risk."
To Houston, a dog being a full-fledged character was a natural progression for her work. "When I'm with my dogs, I spend half of my time wondering what they're thinking, talking to them and answering for them," she said. Dogs, in fact, have spoken before, albeit briefly, in Houston's writing.
"Sight Hound" was supposed to be a book of short stories, which explains the 12 first-person narrators. As ties between characters emerged, the book evolved into a novel, and new narrators appeared. "I thought Dante would be the only nonhuman speaker - and then Rose asserted herself."
Houston realized there were limits to how many narrators she could successfully juggle. "Some were dropped as others were added. So another narrator had to tell the story for the narrator who was dropped."
"Sight Hound" continues the autobiographical bent of Houston's work, which is always adjusted, she emphasizes, with plenty of fictionalization. In part, Houston notes, this stems from the fact that it isn't humanly possible to accurately represent our experience. She offered the example of Dante, who was Houston's dog as well as a character in the book. "Did I go out of my way to write Dante as fictional? No, I wrote my experience of him. Was Dante Buddhist? Of course, I don't know that."
Other elements in the novel are intentionally imaginary. "Eddie is almost entirely an invention, but I did have someone once say to me [as Eddie does in the book] that I needed an exorcism."
Still, a portion of the real Houston is reflected in the tough and tender Rae, from the dry, cheery wit Rae uses to mask her ever-present fear to the way she can't sleep when she's waiting for the other shoe to drop. "My therapist is always saying my powers of denial kept me alive. I sort of like it about myself, that I don't ever say, 'It's all f--.'"
Houston's characters have metamorphosed along the same lines as Houston. "I'm learning how to take responsibility for my own life. The girl in 'Cowboys,' whom I love very much, she saw herself as being acted upon. In 'Waltzing the Cat,' she was starting to see that she was part of these decisions. In 'Sight Hound,' she's moving beyond that."
Houston's landscapes are so vividly evoked, such an integral part of her stories, that they become characters in their own right to which the other characters must respond. Her writing is firmly rooted in the physical, a visceral tactic she teaches her writing students at UC-Davis, where she is director of creative writing. "[As Rae in 'Sight Hound'] I could say, 'I've had a bad childhood, I'm hypervigilant and I think bad things are going to happen.' It's much more physical when you don't just read it. You feel it when I say, 'A wildfire is burning nearby and my house's name is on it.'"
Like Rae, Houston has finally found the right man. In 2001 she married actor Martin Buchanan, a former Seattleite who performed with such theater groups as Book-It and the Seattle Rep. "In certain ways he resembles Howard in the story. He's a good guy, an excellent dog dad. He's dedicated himself to the dogs and horses this winter because I've been on the road so much."
Houston has definitely traveled a long way from the men of "Cowboys Are My Weakness."
Freelance writer Maggie Larrick lives in the Seattle area and is the former editor of the News.
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