BUYING CIGARETTES FOR THE DOG
Stories
By Stuart Ross
April 2009
5.5 x 7.5 paper 200 pp
978-1-55111-879-6
US $19.95 | CDN $19.95 | UK £9.99 | AUST $24.95
A man steps out for a pack of smokes and winds up walking around the planet; a woman sun-tanning by a pool finds herself covered in chicken feet; a guerrilla army of cows infiltrates a big city; a man hires a bodyguard to protect him from his poodle. The first book of fiction since 1997 from the consummately underground Stuart Ross blends an unflagging penchant for experiment with the measured skill of a seasoned, highly disciplined craftsman. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog is anything but a collection of linked stories in a homogenous voice: instead, Ross offers us fables, letters, political tracts, gems of minimalist surrealism, and even a post-gothic novella. Throughout, he draws from the same deep, dark sense of humour that has earned him acclaim as Canada’s foremost surrealist poet. Ross’s strange, strangely compassionate stories engage the emotions as well as the intellect, giving the reader no choice but to participate. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog holds a mirror to the absurdities of 21st-century Earth; here is an absurdism so true that it becomes real.
PRAISE FOR STUART ROSS
“The only real risk a reader runs with Ross is not being open enough to enjoy the wild ride.”
—George Murray, The Globe and Mail
“Stuart Ross never ceases to amaze. His writing is an eclectic and Kafka-esque social commentary that includes linguistic play, ironic introspection, surrealist landscapes and vaudevillian slapstick…. Ross presents a riotous convergence of images appropriated from masterpieces of literature, pop culture and his own bizarre imagination.
—Fausto Bedoya, Rampike
“[W]hat is perhaps most striking about Ross’s work is the originality of its point of view. It is strange, yes. But it is not scattergun weird. It is patterned; it is consistent; it is art.”
—Michael Bryson, The Danforth Review
“In the court of Canadian poetry and society, Stuart Ross is a sort of Shakespearean fool …whose clowning around serves a higher artistic and moral purpose.”
—Zachariah Wells, Arc
See Biography of Stuart Ross
