For my trip to Orlando for Lotusphere I picked up a copy of this book. As someone who loves racing in the rain, I was intrigued by the title from the time the book first came out.

But when I found out the narrator was a dog, for reasons I can't exactly explain, I worried the name was a come-on--that it was too much to hope somebody had actually written something compelling, thoughtful, about racing--and somehow that kept me from pulling the trigger.

Then, when it became popular with, well, normal people, that pushed me even further away.

That, I can tell you now, was time sqandered. Wasted. Frittered away.

Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question. I have not words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences. And that's why I'm here now waiting for Denny to come home--he should be here soon--lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine.

Enzo--the dog's name is Enzo--is not your typical dog. In fact, he's a brilliant and, at times, very funny, narrator.

If it weren't for the fact I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer last night, I would have read it all the day I first cracked the cover. As it was, I still nearly made it. This is an excellent and heart-warming book but don't, like I did, let the phrase "heart-warming" keep you away.

I heard an interview with Garth Stein, the author, and he said he raced a Spec Miata until he wrecked it in the rain. That's all he said, leaving me to think his driving experience was limited but the book says otherwise. His understanding (channelled through Enzo) of the nuances of racing--and particularly of racing in the rain--are deep. He knows exactly what he's talking about:

"Very gently. Like there are egshells on your pedals," Denny always says, "and you don't want to break them. That's how you drive in the rain."

When we watch videos together--which we've done ever since the very first day I met him--he explains these things to me. (To me!) Balance, anticipation, patience. These are all vital. Peripheral vision, seeing things you've never seen before. Kinesthetic sensation, driving by the seat of the pants. But what I've always like best is when he talks about having no memory. No memory of things he'd done just a second before. Good or bad. Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember.

If you have somehow waited even longer than me to get this book, run! don't walk! (as my mother likes to instruct about dealing with bad infections) and get it, but make sure you have some free time.

Great book.

Great. Book.

1. Roy Lipner01/23/2010 07:52:29 PM

Read the audio book version about ten months ago. Went through it in a one day drive from Chicago to Boston. Patrick Dempsy has bought the screenplay. Can't wait to see Enzo strapped in zipping around the track in the passenger seat.