More quotes from Joseph O’Neill, THE DOG.

• Dinner with the locals:The three men jumped on the black goat and wrestled it to the ground and instantly roped its legs. I might have been watching a rodeo. Giancarlo slit the animal’s throat…A short while later the chef arrived with a serving dish. “The liver,” Georges said. “Fresh, fresh.” I accepted a piece, against my will. I did not want to put a part of the goat inside me.
• Experience: When all is said and done and pondered, experience amounts simply to extra weight.
• Relationships: Inner absenteeism is inconsistent with the performance of the duties of a loving partner.
• Suicide: I find it calming that I have no dependents of any kind and am always at liberty to hang myself. On second thought: To put oneself to death would offer a dispiriting example and one ought not to do it.
• Facebook: A festival of mutual absolution – I wanted some of it. I wanted to divulge my playlists and movie favorites, my moments of wit and hope and wry gloom.
• America: A strange, gigantically foolish place that sooner or later will be undone by the calamitous mental life of its population…Dolts thrive; one senses an eventual crash of crashes.