Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf

by Paul Fattaruso

When a freak accident involving an infallible gambler, a truck full of chickens and a gas pump leaves an easygoing young man named Iple deaf, he decides to travel to Antarctica. Tagging along with a team of contrary, often childish scientists, he is the sole member of the expedition to keep his head as the days stretch and the nights become non-existent. While wandering the tundra Iple finds the frozen body of a runaway scientist whose ghost asks him to detour towards an enormous sheet of translucent ice. Below the sheet, with her four legs in the air, is Isabella, a dinosaur and the last DNA repository of a wealth of human and pre-human knowledge. What follows is a mesmerizing detour into our species’ fear and wonder at the nature of prediction. Paul Fattaruso’s vision is a statisticians wet dream and a mystics worst nightmare…or is it the other way around? Fattaruso, trained as a poet, spins a lyrical and highly visual modern day fable, a creation myth for the generation whose gods look more like dinosaurs than any monster before or since.

Genres: Fiction

124 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2004

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely sure what I just read...

[Sarajo Wentling · Rating 2 out of 5]

I honestly have no idea what I just read. Possibly the weirdest and most random thing I've ever read.

[Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, surreal, magical

[Chris Keefe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Expectation is a terrible thing. After a dozen years, I finally found a copy of this slim volume, only to be disappointed by its plainness. Travel in the mouth of the wolf reads like a missed opportunity. Fattaruso is brave enough to write his own world regardless the reader's expectations, but I was left without a sense of why I should care about that world at all. Quirky, short, sweet, and lacking substance, this one's a doughnut.

[rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

to read this book is to wander through endless spiral staircases of memory, each new turn quietly unfurling itself before your eyes, pushing the brain's statisticians and detectives into a far corner; here, you have no use for them. it is a place of surprises: small, dripping with wry humor, matter-of-fact, but always sparkling and brilliant.

[Richard]

When a freak accident involving an infallible gambler, a truck full of chickens and a gas pump leaves an easygoing young man named Iple deaf, he decides to travel to Antarctica. Tagging along with a team of contrary, often childish scientists, he is the sole member of the expedition to keep his head as the days stretch and the nights become non-existent.

While wandering the tundra trying to reconstruct his hearing and memory, Iple finds himself on top of an enormous sheet of translucent ice. Below the sheet, with her four legs in the air, is Isabella, a dinosaur and the last DNA repository of a wealth of human and pre-human knowledge.

What follows is a mesmerizing detour into our species’ fear and wonder at the nature of prediction. Paul Fattaruso’s vision is a statistician’s wet dream and a mystic’s worst nightmare … or is it the other way around? As twin little girl physics vie for the future of the human race, we are drawn into a distant past that smells suspiciously like the future. In this harrowing and wildly funny novella, a wry and haunting new voice speaks to us from farther and farther away, casting a cool catlike eye towards strange things humans do, have done and will soon do again. Fattaruso, trained as a poet, spins a lyrical and highly visual modern day fable, a creation myth for the generation whose gods look more like dinosaurs than any monsters before or since.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ignoring for a moment the simple beauty of the language, I love most of all Fattaruso's ability to think, to roll out a simple piece of logic (or dismantling thereof) that carries more weight than the wordcount of the thought should allow: "She liked to imagine the planets and quasars and pulsars and black holes as noble geniuses, who understood the rules of mathematics perfectly and obeyed because they were good sports."

Then he mounts these thoughts within a framework of weirdness, where antarctic scientists and an ex-president and an unfrozen brontosaur intermingle, and where from above in the afterlife this mingling is watched by the guy who set all the action in motion. I think it's important to note that the weirdness is what allows him to create many of the instances of his unique thinking. While he seems to have allowed himself freedom in the creation of the world, it was far from a random process, tackled with the deliberateness of a poet. I usually call it weird "with a purpose," and many of my favorite books also demonstrate the technique.

[Abby Hagler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is sort of weird. Of course, Fattaruso started out as a poet. His poems are very prose-ish, and his prose is very lyrical. But that's only the beginning of how these stories get weird. If a poet is writing fiction at all, the stories are going to be a little out there. So, of course, Fattaruso comes up with people with various personal difficulties banded together in Antarctica reviving a dinosaur. We as readers get to hear what the dinosaur is thinking. We travel through time and traumatic, personality-shaping events to get to sort of a zero point in the story. This book is easy to read and very well-written. Fattaruso reminds me of Tin House author Jim Krusoe, who wrote Girl Factory, Iceland, and one other novel with bizarre plots twists and characters.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf is a short, postermodern, surrealistic fantasy piece about, well, about a lot of things. The plot is deliberately disjointed, but involves a deaf man who travels to Antarctica, where he discovers a frozen brontosaurus. Other characters include an ex-president, a goldbeater, and a philosophical Argentine shortstop. Their stories weave together a kaleidoscopic exploration of human origins, the afterlife, and the predictability of the universe.

The real value in Paul's book is his tragicomic narrative voice and poetic phrasings. A promising first novel. Bravo, Paul.

[Tori]

2005...Read for school. I'm not really sure how to summarize this book. I had to read it for my intro to creative writing class, since my professor went to grad school with the author. It's about a guy named Iple, who lost his hearing and decides to go to Antarctica with a bunch of researchers. It's also about a shortstop in Brazil. And a dinosaur named Isabella who remembers everything that ever happened in the past. I don't think I would have ever picked this up on my own time, but the style was interesting to look at.

[Patjones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick (112 pages), beautiful read, Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf is sure to be on my list of the best books I've read this year. Lyrical prose meanders through numerous parallel storylines ranging from prehistory to modern day Antarctica to Heaven in a sort of fable about the origins and possible future of mankind.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book can be insanity inducing due to its plot twists. But in the end, I just didn't care about my insanity. It was gorgeous insanity. This little book is lovely. Who cares if it doesn't have a plot? It makes me feel like I'm a dreaming child again, which is much different from a child dreaming somehow.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quirky, beautiful, brilliant book. It was one of those moments when you happen to pick up the perfect book at the perfect time. Filled with unusual & endearing characters, a dinosaur, and a psychic in the arctic, in the future, in the past, in the afterlife and in space.

[Britton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really beautiful and strange lyrical novel. At first I was concerned with the strange plot jumping and sudden turns, but as soon as I let go of expecting a typically format it became a wonderful read. Like waking to dreams half remembered.

[Rozzell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book of all time. More on the subject later.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like nothing you've ever read.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is brilliant and dreamy and surreal and truthful. i want to write a book like this.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not that it wasn't good...it just isn't quite my kind of book. But it's a short novella, a fun quick read that thoughtfully explores time and memory.

[emi k · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all time favorite books. It is all at once, creative, funny, sad, and wonderous. READ THIS BOOK!