Would You Have Sex Beside A Dog?

Short Story Review for THE YELLOW by Samantha Hunt

Samantha Hunt is a writer and artist. According to Random House Australia, Hunt has just won the new “5 under 35” award from the 2006 National Book Awards. She has been published in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s among others, been featured on “This American Life” and has had her short fiction nominated for a Pushcart Prize and included in the anthology “This is Not Chick Lit”. Hunt currently teaches writing and bookmaking at Pratt Institute, and is a graduate of The University of Vermont where she studied science and English. 

The Yellow was published in the New Yorker on November 29, 2010.

                  The Yellow:

The reader is introduced right away to Roy, a 42 year-old loser who still lives at home. We get a glimpse of what this sexy man is like as he eats a cheese and onion sandwich, and abandons it to watch TV.

One night, sick of too much TV, Roy, like a little kid decides to paint his bedroom to improve himself. I do not see how painting his room will help him, but I humour him and read on. Roy thinks to himself that he doesn’t need sleep, who needs sleep? Obviously not him because he is a dead beat who mooches off his parents and doesn’t have a job to wake up to. Go on Roy. 

                  “And by eleven the next morning his work was done. He sat cross-legged on the floor inhaling heady fumes.” That explains a lot. Roy painted his room bright yellow using the paint his dad uses to paint the curb. Smart Roy. 

                  After Roy wrecks his parent’s walls, he goes for a drive. Fiddling with the radio like an indecisive teenager, Roy hits a dog. Like anyone would do, he resolves to carry this bloody carcass to every house until he can find the owner of the mangled mutt. This is actually pretty decent of him, but who knows why he was really doing it. He might have just not had anything better to do. After all, he had already finished painting his room, so his schedule was wide open.

                  Luckily the first house he goes to is where the carcass belongs. Naturally Susanne Martin, who is on the verge of a breakdown, allows a stranger carrying her dead dog into her home and lay the dog, Curtains, on the carpet. For some reason Roy offers to pay for a replacement dog even though Curtains was an old mutt. He writes a check for $200 when he only has $216 to his name.

                  You may be thinking, what happens next. Well, let me tell you. Roy and Suzzie proceed to commit adultery next to Suzzie's dead dog on the floor while her husband and children are out to a movie.

                  While Roy is  still inside Susanne, Curtains comes back to life and starts licking Roy’s scapula. I mean, we've all been through this. Roy and Susanne are dumbfounded. They now act like lovers; he calls her Anne and she kneels in front of Roy resting on his knees.

Naturally Anne tells Roy that he has to kill the dog all over again. Of course! She was upset before and making him pay for a new dog and now that she has her beloved dog back, she wants the damned thing dead? This lady is of her rocker for sure. 

It may sound as if I disliked the story, but the thing is, I actually found it quite enjoyable and Hunt told the story extremely well and even managed to fit in what is apparently a zombie dog. It caught my attention straight away and maintained it throughout. There are two very dysfunctional characters and their stories appealed to me. Well written and worth a read. 

What crossed my mind as I read The Yellow:

1) Roy sounds like a real winner. I know how this all ends for him. He will go back to his mom and dad’s, eat a plate of nachos even though his mom tells him to stop eating all the cheese and watch infomercials until four in the morning. I’ve seen it all before.

2) Now that his room is painted yellow, Roy doesn’t feel so confused? Really? Confused about what? As to why he decided to have an onion and cheddar sandwich for lunch rather than make some soup or something?I guess you would be confused. I mean, I would feel confused too if I was a fat slob with nothing going for me. He should be confused about what your mother and father are going to do to him once they find out that he used their bright yellow curb paint to paint his room.

3) You have sex next to your dead dog? Real classy Susanne.

4) That dog is a champ. His head was floppy, he was "certainly dead," and there was blood everywhere. Where did this zombie dog come from? There is no use trying to kill Curtains again because it looks like he ain't goin' nowhere. 

Read this for yourself. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/11/29/101129fi_fiction_hunt?currentPage=all