Buying Cigarettes for the Dog

by Stuart Ross

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 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.

Genres: Short Stories

198 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks.

A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective. He had his own imprint, a stuart ross book, at Mansfield Press for a decade, and was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years. In fall 2017, he launched a new poetry imprint, A Feed Dog Book, through Anvil Press.

Stuart has edited several small literary magazines, including Mondo Hunkamooga: A Journal of Small Press Stuff, Syd & Shirley, Who Torched Rancho Diablo?, Peter O’Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems, and, most recently HARDSCRABBLE.

He is the author of two collaborative novels, two solo novels, two collections of stories, and twelve full-length poetry books. He has also published two collections of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer and Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (both from Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press) and co-edited Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press).

Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada and works one-on-one with authors on their manuscripts. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario. In spring 2009, Freehand Books released his first short-story collection in more than a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, to almost unanimous critical acclaim.

Stuart was the fall 2010 writer-in-residence at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the winter 2021 writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa.

In 2017, Stuart won the eighth annual Battle of the Bards, presented by the International Festival of Authors and NOW Magazine. In spring 2023, Stuart received the biggest book award in Ontario, the Trillium Book Prize, for his memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers. In fall 2019, Stuart was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature and literary community. His other awards include the Canadian Jewish Literary Prize for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His work has been translated into Russian, French, Spanish, Estonian, Slovene, and Nynorsk.

Stuart is currently working on ten book projects.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

stuart ross takes full advantage of technology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV5CrH...

and gets recognized for it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12...


stuart ross is a nice man with crazy hair who lives at the anvil press booth at the small press fair and always makes me buy more books than i had intended. he also wrote this book.

this is a really fun collection of absurdist stories that only occasionally stray into the "too absurd for me" camp. occasionally i am baffled by the appeal of the absurd, but that is just me and my personal taste, and most of these stories were wicked fun.

standouts in the collection include: remember teeth which is my very favorite and gives me chills the way that urban legend does; you know the one. the suntan feels very latin american-y magical and is probably my second-fave. the ape play is repetitive nonsense that is irresistible and retarded in the best possible way. like lancelot link written by a drunk child. letter to heidi fleiss reminded me big-time of something neal pollack would write, and i like neal pollack. the more abstract pieces reminded me of borges, who i do not like, but if you are going to not be liked by me, you might as well do it by reminding me of borges, because then most people will like you, is my advice. i have no idea what elliott goes to school is about, the ending puzzles me.language lessons with simon and marie made me laugh out loud several times, and i love it like crazies. i think i want to reread that one right now. the engagement is a pretty perfect way to end the collection; i mean, there are a lot of excellent stories here, and i tend to avoid short stories when i can, so it is saying something from me, this.

incidentally, it is awkward reviewing books by authors with whom you have shared beers and booktalks, and i am grateful that this book doesn't suck.i read this collection in my head in his voice, picturing him in his canadian house, staring off into the distance at the canadian landscape while he chews the end of his canadian pen and searches for the most appropriate canadian word to finish his canadian sentence.

and i liked it.

incidentally,
"i cannot be dislodged" is my new mantra.
i did not have an old mantra, but this is my new one, regardless.

come to my blog!

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little surprised by the refined craftsmanship of the stories in Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. I guess I've come to expect some degree of heavy-handedness or lack of depth in fiction written in a frankly surreal/absurdist mode. Ross's examples, however, display a lot of writerly intelligence in knowing just exactly how far to push a bizarre concept to arrive at a perfectly satisfying aesthetic result. I was repeatedly impressed by the restraint and subtlety shown in dealing with totally off-the-wall characters and situations. The poetry of the language certainly enhances this perception too. In fact, I was motivated to order one of this author's poetry collections because it seemed I was getting some representation of what he could do in that arena by these prose pieces. Needless to say, this is a very worthwhile book.

[Rubberboots · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generous 3 stars for this collection, and the 3rd star only allocated for Ross’ dark sense of humour which I tend to appreciate. All stories were pretty much in the bizarre realm and all very much average. My personal fav was Brother Archie.

[Mark Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great short pieces of all different forms. Some are surreal and off the wall and others more serious, still others comedic. A lot of memorable scenes, like the man who tries to become part of a tree to escape from people who are chasing him. A dude can't stop falling down a hill and keeps on rolling right down the street. Very funny stuff which occasionally bumps up against the author's more serious artistic intentions. This could be considered an uneven tone at times, but I can't say that it bothered me. Mostly because I picked it up and put it down over a great length of time and read another book in between.

[Mark Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny, wise and surreal. Just when you think it can't get any weirder, it does -- kind of like life itself. I'd recommend this book to teen readers looking for a unique, approachable voice with a skewed sense of the world as well as to anyone unafraid of the unusual in fiction.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I prefer his poetry.

[Shayne Power · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, just not sure I understood it.

[Daniel f Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

At 17, I know I am a little old for Buying Cigarettes For The Dog, but there was a vast majority of it I did enjoyed. I am very fond of dogs in literature, like The Handmaid's Tale and A Confederacy Of Dunces. While Buying Cigarettes For The Dog isn't the best book, and I am not sure what Alexandre Dumas would make of it, it is entertaining and has a sense of fun. True, some of the dialogue is a little ropey (although I loved "we're here to save the prince not date him") and there are one or two slow moments in the plot. However, while not as stunning as the Gravity's Rainbow, it is colourful and overall lovely to read. Plus the little kitten is very cute, and Phillippe is a convincing enough lead villain, with his velvety voice and swatty laugh, he is perfect. What a genius the author is for creating him. All in all, while bearing little resemblance to the Dumas classic, this is still a hugely enjoyable book, and I do hope it gets more recognition than it's got at the moment. Then again, it is early days, but let's keep our fingers crossed. Preschoolers will definitely love it.

[Corinne Wasilewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the conversational tone in each of these stories; the writing's silliness and humour (as well as the ever-lurking sadness), and the abundance of mystery. Ross is amazing with descriptions and comes up with some great similes and metaphors. Here's one of my favourites:
One of his testicles hung out the left leg of his trunks like an almost-empty marble bag, and he kept tucking it back in, and it kept tumbling back out.

[Scotchneat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Ross is a poet by trade. These short stories definitely have the sniff of the post-modern quirk about them.

Uneven effort, I would say. Some of the stories left me with a smirk at their deviations of plot. Others didn't really seem to go anywhere.

[Marion Reidel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book at the reading where Stuart Ross was performing. He was highly entertaining and his voice comes through clearly in his prose. The stories are quirky and in some cases I had to do a reread to figure out what the heck he was talking about. But I like that he's pushing boundaries.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

too off the wall for my tastes

[Alex Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is bizarre, I kept trying to find connections through the various stories and my only line I found was that none of these people are real. Which in a way makes them the realest people I’ve ever “met”.
Incredibly fun and strange beyond belief, I also think the pope is a bit of a dick now.

[Alexis]

Reviewing for Alberta Views

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Does your faltering English get in the way of ordering hamburgers and shoes?" - Language Lessons...with Simon and Marie!