Love Bites: An Interview With Toby Barlow

By Tony DuShane, Mother Jones. Posted July 12, 2008.

In his debut novel, Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow introduces us to a Los Angeles filled with werewolves who don't need a full moon to go from human to lycanthrope. They're everyday people, leading normal lives right under our noses, but that they can switch to animal form at will, and even become pets for lonely housewives when the heat is on. These werewolves are pack animals. Alone they are vulnerable, together they are strong, and they are bent on fighting other packs to take over the City of Angels.

There's more to Sharp Teeth than fantasy and horror. There's the love story of a dogcatcher who ends up in a relationship with a woman who is more than she appears. There's homage to Bukowski and Chandler as well as poets of millennia past. And to completely tweak us out, Barlow's written his five-part tale entirely in free verse. Reading the first 10 pages is a bit jarring, but once the rhythm kicks in, Sharp Teeth is hard to put down. It's completely engaging on every level, with sympathetic characters and a driving plot that grabs you by the throat like a pit bull and doesn't let go until page 308.

Barlow has broken the rules of conventional novel writing, gaining a readership that continues to grow by word of mouth. Sharp Teeth is a future cult classic that will continue to be discovered by readers hungry for sex, violence, and a fantasy world wrapped up in a literary work. Its sudden success has caught Barlow, whose day job is as a creative director of an ad agency, somewhat by surprise. A decade ago, when he was going through a rough patch, a psychic offered an unsolicited look into his future and told him to wait until he was 42 years old. On the day of his 42nd birthday, he kicked off his book tour and the LA Weekly gave Sharp Teeth a stellar review. Nick Hornby has also praised the book, saying, "Sharp Teeth will end up being clasped to the collective bosom of the young, dark, and fucked-up." Barlow spoke to Mother Jones from Minneapolis.

Mother Jones: I have this weird thing about dogs now. The next time a dog humps my leg, I think I'm going to have sexual thoughts because of your book.

Toby Barlow: I was just going on a walk around a lake here in Minneapolis, and I find myself making eye contact with all the dogs in a slightly deeper fashion than I used to.

MJ: So writing the book changed your relationship with dogs as well.

TB: Yes, in a pretty scary manner. I was always sort of a dog person. I had pets growing up and stuff, but when you write a whole novel about them, you become a part of their community.

MJ: Let me ask you about the parallels between dog and human relationships. I was craving some of the intimacy the dogs had in the book, the sense of belonging to the pack.

TB: I think human beings have all these tools for social connection, which should bring us together but instead causes all sorts of confusion and discombobulation. With dogs, they're either fighting or they're falling asleep on one another's necks. It's a much simpler form of community that they've come up with. I agree, people are oftentimes very self-congratulatory about the civilization we've built around us, when in fact lying at our feet are much simpler and more satisfied societies.

MJ: The book brings to light that there's so much we can learn from dogs to become better humans.

TB: It's funny; there's a parallel book that just came out by a woman who retrained injured dogs. She decided to try the same elements on her boyfriend to teach him how to be a good boyfriend. That's one simplistic example, but I think to a great degree there is a loyalty and there is a bond between dogs that we have a hard time coming to terms with. And I think that dogs accept that they can live together and not understand one another, and I think that we somehow always try to have a complete and transparent understanding of one another, which just leads to more confusion.

See more stories tagged with: los angeles, books, sharp teeth, toby barlow

Tony DuShane lives in San Francisco and hosts the radio show Drinks With Tony.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Media and Technology! Sign up now »