I can't say as I had such a myopic first reading as you did. To me, the piece was immediately and overwhelmingly about men, women, and how we alternately damage and need each other.

Although, as a hunter, I'm completely distracted by the fact that turkeys don't strut, gobble, or respond to calling in the winter - only in the spring, during mating season. (The use of calling and a decoy also renders the strewn corn useless as well). By that fact, both the winter season and the strutting tom are rendered as bare literary devices in direct conflict with each other. Though I can grasp the greater significance of both, he just can't have his cake and eat it too.

Thank you Mr. Frizzelle for the thoughtful examination of D'Ambrosio's art, and to The Stranger for giving it the space. D'Ambrosio's "The Bone Game" is one of my touchstone short stories, and he and Raban are, arguably, Seattle's finest current male fiction voices. I agree that the story isn't in the Hemingway vein, full of manly men doing manly men rituals and then getting hammered and expressing the inner ennui that frames all of Hemingway, but it is definitely in the Carver camp. Carver often created volatile relationships between Men and Women where trust and control become central to characters soaked in alcoholism and despair. Carver wasn't interested in the ritual, just the quagmire....At any rate, very stimulating analysis and you got me to reread a fine piece of work.

Holy fuck, this is shitty, self-indulgent writing at its worst. Is there a point to this collection of random nouns, verbs and adjectives slopped together in a pale pool of literary vomit? Does the writer even have an idea where he wants to go in this story? Fuck if anybody knows.

What a brilliant Thankgiving gift: a deep analysis of both writing and reading. To be treasured.

@3 it's no Talladega Nights

I bought a remaindered copy of Dead Fish Museum a year or more ago, having heard good things about D'Ambrosio somewhere, but not finding him in any used bookstores—my interest level did not justify retail prices. When I saw your article on Up North, I put it down and found my copy of DFM. Read it. On Thanksgiving. Then read your article. The aspects of the story that affected me most are not a complete overlap with yours, but I was quite impressed with the density of the writing, and identified with Daly's nature, if not his actual circumstances. Thanks for providing this bit of holiday significance to me. All the more impactful for its seemingly random occurrence.

Read the whole short story through this lens:

“ 'Your father go out?'

'He usually goes,' she said. 'He and the boys. And now you. Now you’ll be one of the boys.' ”

It's about turning Daly into one of the men who betrays Caroline. Her father knows - he's a good actor too, and the one who encouraged Caroline's acting (that's not a throwaway detail). Sandy also knows - that's the significance of her speech about secrets. Steve raped Caroline. But the men have made their pact, settled on their story, and they're all liars.

Caroline doesn't trust Daly. She never did. She's already been betrayed by the man she was closest to - her father - and now she won't let herself trust the man she should be closest to - her husband. Her anorgamia isn't about Daly or impotence; it's about her own walls. The cabin of her childhood is the preservation of the worst thing that ever happened to her, which she ritually revisits yearly, and which she's now bringing Daly to. The climax of the story is the ending where Daly pushes her into the snow, cold and shivering, and refuses to help her up. His transformation into one of the men of the cabin is complete. The significance of the hunt scene is secondary. It's just a metaphor and a vehicle for Daly to betray his vegetarian, birder self (the caring, sensitive husband) and join the boys club.

There's a lot of rich detail and nuance and I could go on about, but that's the gist for me. This isn't a story about manliness or hunting or gender relationships writ large. It's about a fundamental betrayal woven into the fabric of a family, the grotesque play they put on for each other each year, and how the narrator gets slotted into his role.