Editor’s note: This essay was originally published in 2012 and has been lightly edited. With “The Odyssey” back in the cultural conversation ahead of Christopher Nolan’s star-studded adaptation, opening July 17, we’re revisiting one of Roy Peter Clark’s favorite writing lessons: “Get the name of the dog.”
Our dog Rex, a Jack Russell terrier, turned 18 years old this week. He was mentioned in The New York Times a few years ago; I was quoted as saying that my wife Karen and I loved that dog more than we loved each other. More on the consequences of that quote later.
For now, I will use Rex’s birthday to return to the first writing tool I learned at the newspaper then known as the St. Petersburg Times.
Reporters, I was told by the brass, must never come home from a story without the name of the dog.
Stated more directly: “Get the name of the dog.”
Such was my affection for this writing strategy that I wanted to use it as a book title. In the end, though, “The Name of the Dog” became “Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.” Anticipating the literalism of search engine optimization, my publisher decided that the title should reflect what the book was really about. Simple-minded bastards!
“Get the name of the dog” survived only as a chapter title. Although it appears as Tool No. 14, it ranks as No. 1 in my heart. Every strategic move I’ve shared over 30 years grows from the Fido theorem. It stands, for me, as a synecdoche, the rhetorical device in which a part stands for the whole. In other words, if writers remember to get the dog’s name, they will be curious and attentive enough to gather all the relevant details in their epiphanic particularity.
Not long ago, I was reading Robert Fitzgerald’s dazzling translation of “The Odyssey,” one of the two great epics that mark the beginnings of Western literature. Odysseus, the crafty Greek warrior, struggles for 20 years after the Trojan War to return to his kingdom in Ithaca. Things are not good back home. Suitors and slackers by the dozens plot to take control of his land, his household, his goods and his faithful wife, Penelope. He must sneak into his homeland in disguise. As he speaks to a shepherd …
… an old hound, lying near, pricked up his ears
and lifted up his muzzle. This was Argos,
trained as a puppy by Odysseus,
but never taken on a hunt before
his master sailed for Troy. The young men, afterward,
hunted wild goats with him, and hare, and deer,
but he had grown old in his master’s absence.
Treated as rubbish now, he lay at last
Upon a mass of dung before the gates –
Manure of mules and cows, piled there until
fieldhands could spread it on the king’s estate.
Abandoned there, and half destroyed with flies,
old Argos lay.
But when he knew he heard
Odysseus’ voice nearby, he did his best
to wag his tail, nose down, with flattened ears,
having no strength to move nearer his master.
And the man looked away, wiping a salt tear from his cheek…
… but death and darkness in that instant closed
the eyes of Argos, who had seen his master,
Odysseus, after twenty years.
I sit here at my keyboard just a Zoloft away from having to wipe a salt tear from my own cheek. Not only does Homer give us the name of the dog — the same name as a Greek city — but he also offers what may be the first narrative of the power of dogs to bond for life with their human friends and masters.
On countless occasions over more than three decades, I have asked writers at workshops to share the names of their dogs — and the stories behind those names. Each tale and tail is a revelation, exposing everything from ethnicity and culture to school loyalties, family heritage and popular culture. The first student to answer at Notre Dame said the family dog’s name was “Rudy,” after the undersized Notre Dame football player who became the subject of a feature film.
I think about that lesson every time someone asks me the name of my own dog.
This is Rex.
The name Rex carries a bit of irony. He came to us in an adorable but ferocious package at a time when the “Jurassic Park” movies were popular. He had the heart of a T. rex in a two-pound body. We also liked that Rex was a traditional dog’s name, that it meant “king,” and that my name, Roy, meant “king” in French. I had three daughters, so Rex became the son I never had. My son, Rex the dog, named after me.
When Michael Vick was imprisoned for his dog-fighting operation, I often posed this question to writers: “I’ve read dozens of stories about the scandal, but I’ve never seen the name of a single dog. Did the dogs not have names? If so, I want to know them. Were they called Mauler, Killer and Spike? Was there a Bruce or Fluffy in the group? I really wanted to know.”
People wanted to know what became of the 51 dogs kept at the “Bad Newz Kennels.” (We had the name of the kennel, but not the dogs.) Several reports followed, including Jim Gorant’s “The Lost Dogs,” which became a cover story for Sports Illustrated. It turned out that many of the dogs were known by names such as Sweet Jasmine, Zippy, Little Red, Ellen and Google.
OK, time for the kicker. Travel back in time with me to the day I was quoted in The New York Times (accurately) as saying that my wife and I loved our dog Rex more than we loved each other.
“How could you say that?” a friend asked. “How could you even think that?”
My impassioned response? “Who greets me at the door when I get home, looking as if he’s genuinely glad to see me? Who loves the smell of my dirty, sweaty socks? Who waits for me to get out of the shower so he can lick the little droplets of water off my shin? Who is willing to defend me, to the death, against a possum, lizard, snake or squirrel?”
Alerted to the story in the Times, I called Karen at her workplace and read it to her from beginning to end so she would have the full context. It was about one of the most powerful phenomena of the Hurricane Katrina evacuation: Many people refused to save themselves because they would not leave their dogs behind.
I understood that impulse and sympathized with it. Then came my statement that, despite almost 40 years of marriage, Karen and I loved our dog more than we loved each other.
Silence on the line.
Then Karen’s voice, tentative at first: “Oh … oh … oh, wow! Rex made The New York Times!”
See what I mean? Happy birthday, Rex.
