The all-night MFA feces incident (bark!) - a photographic novel

Abstract

This is a hybrid work of writing, photography, memoir and novel, in which a dog, Pablo, narrates the life of his human, Gus. Gus, a barely fictional persona of the author, is an MFA student who cannot finish his meta-auto-fictional, dog-narrated thesis because he is a hapless perfectionist and now finds himself stressed out the night before a complete draft of his thesis is due, which also happens to be the night of the 2020 presidential election. Gus intends to stay up all night, but quickly falls asleep, so Pablo sits down and writes the 200 pages for him, a literally dog-narrated thesis. Beginning at 1:00 am and keeping track of time as he goes, Pablo is always moving ahead with the next thought in a fragmented, associative, and at times impulsive manner. Pablo thinks about Gus's struggle to write and the various "Incidents" in Gus's life, among other topics of interest to Gus (organized religion, climate change, irritable bowels, minimalism, falling in love, Trump etc.), while also going through Gus's emails, texts, books and photos. Pablo also finds plenty of time to cover some of his own interests (Pablo Ball, killing birds, etc.), philosophies, and opinions. This is part artistic manifesto, part comedy, part rant, part meta rant, and mostly a collage of "Incidents," voices and images that could be read in any order.