Oddly enough, I bought this book (used) before this Vick business ever hit the fan. Check the technique:... After my mother told me she was to have another child she caught me hanging a puppy from a tree. Other children watching this yelled me name while I wrapped hemp rope around the muzzle to not let it bark. I put the noose around the dogs neck and I raised and lowered it like a piñata. I lowered the dog until its black claw touched the ground enough so that it did not choke. And then I raised it and it swung dying until it was finally dead.And yes, that's the protagonist.
I post the excerpt to point out that nothing Vick did was terribly original. He was adhering to the rules of an exceptionally bizarro culture which has existed for decades before you were born.
A culture which reviewers in the papers of record are happy to send their readers off to explore.
And once you resign yourself to killing for sport -- something any "Hemingway Hero" like the one mentioned in the blurb at right should totally be down for -- hanging a dog from a tree is a really not much of a stretch.
