David Wroblewski’s first novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, is set on a farm in northern Wisconsin, where the Sawtelle family raises a fictional breed of dogs.
Your novel combines three risky elements: some chapters from the point of view of highly intelligent dogs, the appearance of ghosts and references to Hamlet. How did that complex story develop?
All those elements were in the original package when I thought of the story. Those were three things that I was sure needed to be present for the book to be interesting to me.
Okay, first the dogs.
I have a lifelong history with dogs. When I was very young my parents decided to move from the Milwaukee suburbs to an old farm in central Wisconsin to raise their kids. It was one of my mother’s dreams to raise dogs, so they opened a kennel. My parents were poor and raising dogs is expensive. They couldn’t afford to do it the way they felt it should be done, and after five years, they shut it down. While it lasted, though, it was a wonderful time of my life. Socializing the pups was one of my jobs. That’s an experience I’ve carried with me ever since.
Why are the Sawtelle dogs a fictional breed?
I wanted the dogs to be what was at stake in this story, but using a recognizable breed made them less universal. Every breed brings along connotations and preconceptions. Eventually I decided to invite readers to imagine what the dogs are like for themselves.
Your descriptions of the Sawtelles’ training methods are fascinating.
Training is fascinating. One particular book made a huge impact on me: Vicky Hearn’s Adam’s Task, written in the early ’80s during a time when radical behaviorism was still influential in academic psychology. She was willing to talk about animals using an entirely different vocabulary, with morally loaded language. She said that when you train a dog, you have a moral responsibility.
The references to Hamlet are subtle. Readers can enjoy the story without recognizing the similarity of names and incidents, but it’s a bonus for those who do.
It was not my intention to do a literal retelling. It was more interesting to allow the stories to coincide where they could. Ghosts and haunting and poison are motifs of the Elizabethan stage.
Did you know from the beginning that Edgar had to be mute?
Shortly before I started the novel I’d had minor oral surgery. It was awkward to talk afterward and for a week I just didn’t. That sort of extended silence turns you into an observer. I’d been thinking about Hamlet, who is hyper-verbal and yet ironically almost impotent as an actor in the real world, so it was an interesting inversion to have a character who by virtue of being mute must communicate through action, not voice. That made Edgar especially sensitive to language and gesture and the interplay between them: that’s one source of his rapport with the dogs.
The Prologue establishes a sense of mystery and menace. Did you actually write it first or did you add it later to cast a shadow over the narrative?
Well, there’s a sort of MacGuffin in the plot. Half way through the first draft I decided the best place to introduce it was a prologue.
Do you own a dog?
I do have a dog. Her name is Lola and she’s playful and ornery and fascinating. The logical next question is what breed, and I’d rather not tell you. I don’t want to put an image in people minds of the Sawtelle dogs, and it would be natural to think that Lola was a prototype. That said, I have I have the same anxieties and problems of training as any dog owner. I think that we lack the vocabulary of talking about our emotional bonds with animals. I’m encouraged by all the great research into animal cognition going on now.
Author Photo © Marion Ettinger
