The Salmon of Doubt

understand evolution, though we secretly think there’s probably a bit more to it than that. Some of us even think that there’s some “sort of” god, which takes care of the bits that sound a little bit improbable.

Dawkins brings a flood of light and fresh air, and shows us that there is a dazzling clarity to the structure of evolution that is breathtaking when we suddenly see it. And if we don’t see it, then, quite literally, we don’t know the first thing about who we are and where we come from.

5. 5.

Yes, once or twice. But I also dip into it a lot.

6. Does it feel the same as when you first read it?

Yes. The workings of evolution run so contrary to our normal intuitive assumptions about the world that there’s always a fresh shock of understanding.

7. Do you recommend it, or is it a private passion?

I’d recommend it to anybody and everybody.

Maggie and Trudie I am not, I should say at once, in any formal relationship with a dog. I don’t feed a dog, give it a bed, groom it, find kennels for it when I’m away, delouse it, or suddenly arrange for any of its internal organs to be removed when they displease me. I do not, in short, own a dog.

On the other hand, I do have a kind of furtive, illicit relationship with a dog, or rather two dogs. And in consequence I think I know a little of what it must be like to be a mistress.

The dogs do not live next door. They don’t even live in the same—well, I was going to say street and tease it out a bit, but let’s cut straight to the truth. They live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a hell of a place for a dog, or indeed anyone else, to live. If you’ve never visited or spent time in Santa Fe, New Mexico, then let me say this: you’re a complete idiot. I was myself a complete idiot till about a year ago when a combination of circumstances that I can’t be bothered to explain led me to borrow somebody’s house way out in the desert just north of Santa Fe to write a screenplay in. To give you an idea of the sort of place that Santa Fe is, I could bang on about the desert and the altitude and the light and the silver and turquoise jewelry, but the best thing is just to mention a traffic sign on the freeway from Albuquerque.

It says, in large letters, GUSTY WINDS, and in smaller letters MAY EXIST. I never met my neighbours. They lived half a mile away on top of the next sand ridge, but as soon as I started going out for my morning run, jog, gentle stroll, I met their dogs, who were so instantly and deliriously pleased to see me that I wondered if they thought we’d met in a previous life (Shirley MacLaine lived nearby and they might have picked up all kinds of weird ideas from just being near her).

Their names were Maggie and Trudie. Trudie was an exceptionally silly-looking dog, a large, black French poodle who moved exactly as if she had been animated by Walt Disney: a kind of lollop that was emphasised by her large floppy ears at the front end and a short stubby tail with a bit of topiary-work on the end. Her coat consisted of a matting of tight black curls, which added to the general Disney effect by making it seem that she was completely devoid of naughty bits. The way in which she signified, every morning, that she was deliriously pleased to see me was to do a thing that I always thought was called

“prinking” but is in fact called “stotting.” (I’ve only just discovered my error, and I’m going to have to replay whole sections of my life through my mind to see what confusions I may have caused or fallen afoul of.) “Stotting” is jumping upward with all four legs simultaneously. My advice: do not die until you’ve seen a large black poodle stotting in the snow.

The way in which Maggie would signify, every morning, that she was deliriously pleased to see me was to bite Trudie on the neck. This was also her way of signifying that she was deliriously excited at the prospect of going for a walk, it was her way of signifying that she was having a walk and really enjoying it, it was her way of signifying she wanted to be let into the house, it was her way of signifying she wanted to be let out of the house. Continuously and playfully biting Trudie on the neck was, in short, her way of life.

“Maggie,” he said, in his slow, serious Texan drawl, “is a mutt.” So every morning the three of us would set out: me, the large English writer, Trudie the poodle, and Maggie the mutt. I would run-jog-stroll along the wide dirt track that ran through the dry red dunes, Trudie would gambol friskily along, this way and that, ears flapping, and Maggie would bowl along cheerily biting her neck. Trudie was extraordinarily good-natured and long-suffering about this, but every now and then she would suddenly get monumentally fed up. At that moment she would execute a sudden midair about-turn, land squarely on her feet facing Maggie, and give her an extremely pointed look, whereupon Maggie would suddenly sit and start gently gnawing her own rear right foot as if she were bored with Trudie anyway.