Bad Dog

THE BOOK: Bad Dog

PUBLISHED IN: 2012

THE AUTHOR:  John Philpin

THE PUBLISHER: GenPop Books

SUMMARY: Bad Dog is about war. It’s also about the lies that have led us into war, about the rapid drift from the founding principles of the nation, and about the widening chasm between government and the governed. Our protagonist carries with him a missing girl’s Book of Lies, notes and questions from a thirteen-year-old. “If you expect to see what I see,” Zoe Garnier writes, “and to hear what I hear, you have to come around to my side of the table and look at you.” Zoe is French-American, born in Saigon, whisked away to the United States when her mother is murdered, and embarked on her own search for the Nightmare Man: “I don’t like meeting him like this when I don’t know who he is.”

In Bad Dog,  the author-protagonist has written the book he always wanted to write: “…one book, true and not true, with characters who drift in and out, a plot that fades and flashes and fades again, a story that is fragments, bits of this and that just like life is, with no real chronology because what seems important at one moment is reduced to shit the next. At the end, every detail, every thought, every idle reference will be connected, all one.” 

The result is a tale of living through two bouts of national madness. The first “was a time of dreams and desperation, drunken days, Day-Glo nightmares, schemes to stay alive, funerals, madhouses filled with the sane, a killer soundtrack, and murder.” Today: “I gaze out my window now, thirty-eight years later, and I see the new haze — a world filled with evil-doers, plastic wrap, duct tape, and bad tunes — and I know the toilet has backed up again.”

THE BACK STORY: Bad Dog was 50 years in the living, 5 years in the writing. It’s an autobiographical novel and it marked my departure from the “publishing industrial complex”. I had fired my agent and broken the relationship with my publisher after too many years of demands to write according to formula. I’d written psychological thrillers, true crime books based on cases I had worked as a psychologist-consultant, consistently refusing to adhere to formula by insisting on psychological accuracy. It was simple, really: I would write what I wanted to write in whatever form (if any) that I chose. I wrote a poem in high school—something apocalyptic, angry, without punctuation or capital letters, lines ending or beginning capriciously. My teacher said, “Know all the rules before you break them.” It was the kind of sage advice that transcends the medium of the moment. I learned the rules, then embarked on a life dedicated to challenging them.

WHY THIS TITLE?: Long a fan of the poetry, music, philosophy, and activism of the late John Trudell, I was thrilled when he appeared at a Powwow near here. That evening I heard his “Bad Dog” for the first time. “There’s a way we’re expected to obey,” he said, and his words resonated with me just as the words of Lenny Bruce, Muhammad Ali, or Bob Dylan had so many years ago. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Trudell continued, “Don’t you know what freedom means? Bad dog.” My protagonist says that all he wants is to be left alone, but he is told, “That’s the one thing you can’t have.” The leash may remain attached to the collar, but the collar is empty.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Through the years I’ve often said that the only reason to write a book is to light a fire in the reader’s head. Bad Dog is not entertainment; the book is intended to spark thought–free, independent, non-linear, unconditioned and unconditional thought. I confess my love affair with words, with the hypnotic power of language. Handled properly, an abrupt shift in narrative is the best of all possible cures for those who demand all things be linear and neatly ordered.

REVIEW COMMENTS: 

“Bad Dog is a remarkable novel in more ways than one, starting with the dialogue. It’s smart and fast and real, bare of explication, the kind of talk screenwriters aim for. Philpin, though, does something I’ve never quite seen before, embedding the distilled dialogue in a narrative that almost seems an opposite language—a wildly diffusive monologue inside the teller’s brain, ranging unrestricted through memories, riffs on history, outbreaks of anger, the lost dreams of America. On the way to breaking the standard rules of fiction, Bad Dog delivers something that lies at the heart of every novel—our need to make sense of the world.” — Josephine Humphreys, author of Nowhere Else on Earth.

“Bad Dog is a fictional memoir about crime and life by an author who understands both well. At the center of the tale is a double murder and the abduction of a child, but the biggest crimes of all are the lies perpetrated by a government bound and determined to wage war. Head down the rabbit holes of Vietnam and Iraq with a trippy, disillusioned guide who refuses to dance to the drumbeats of death. You’ll feel compelled to read non-stop but forced to pause to contemplate the truths on each page. An unforgettable read.” —Diane Fanning is the author of ten works of true-crime and five mystery novels including Twisted Reason, the most recent in the Lucinda Pierce series.

“Philpin starts at a flat run and never once slows down. Here is murder and kidnapping seen through the lens of a good-hearted draft dodger whose mantra is “Reality does not have my consent.” — Jessie Hunter is the author of Blood Music.

AUTHOR PROFILE: I am a retired psychologist, author, and consultant on serial murder cases living with my wife of 52 years in northern New England. Although I live a reclusive life, I do enjoy occasional spirited conversation. I still receive a few inquiries wondering if I’m “the guy who does murders”. Although memory does fade with age, I remain fairly certain that I’ve never killed anyone.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: The history of this country is a tale of an ever-widening gap between government and the governed, rulers and the ruled. We are taught from day one that obedience, compliance, conformity are good; independent thought is bad. Our history is a binary tale–either/or, right/wrong, when the fact gnaws at the fabric of society that the number of choices available under any system is infinite.

SAMPLE CHAPTER: https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Dog-John-Philpin-ebook/dp/B006UV7ONO/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bad+dog+philpin&qid=1604796219&s=books&sr=1-1

LOCAL OUTLETS: https://genpopbooks.com/john-philpin/bad-dog/

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Amazon 

PRICE: $14.00

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: The easiest way to contact me is through the comment section on my website: http://johnphilpin.com/.

— 
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience.” ~ Howard Zinn