MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
We end the hour with commentator Andrei Codrescu and this dispatch from Arkansas and the dog days of summer.
ANDREI CODRESCU, BYLINE: They say that a dog doesn't make good journalism, unless a man bites him. But my dachshund Gulliver, a stray who wandered skinny through the neighborhood looking for scraps of food and being kicked by passersby, found a journalist who thinks he's big news. When he was 5 years old, this journalist had a much beloved dachshund, also named Gulliver, who followed him everywhere even on mortally dangerous assignments to the Stella soap factory and to the railroad trucks where the circus people camped.
One day, the journalist's stepfather decided to sell Gulliver and fought a long and bloody battle with a 5-year-old journalist who held his dog tight and kicked and screamed at the stepfather who is presently in hell being chewed to death by abused dachshunds. It took 50 years, but Gulliver came back a noble and gentle wanderer with a body and head bred by Durer and other German master engravers in the Middle Ages as the perfect subject for their craft, a dog so fine it made it into the history of art and is now pure journalism in media res and in rez. What a timeless nose Gulliver the wandering hund has.
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BLOCK: Andrei Codrescu's forthcoming book is called "Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Parentheses)."
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.