Harehound: An Existential Fable

Harehound is a fable about Forward Cheque, a white Saluki greyhound racing dog who, one day during a chase, catches Rusty, the mechanical hare, and discovers that it is not a creature but a thing. The rest of the story deals with the question: How does a Hound live in the world without a Hare? When he informs his fellow kennel hounds about his discovery, they ridicule him in disbelief and call him Harehound. But an old hound, Colonel Flash, worries that Harehound's discovery will drive the other hounds insane with doubt and asks him to chase on faith-as if the hare were real. During the next chase, Harehound chases "as if" but during the race the old Colonel's heart gives out and his chasing days come to an end. Harehound becomes even more disillusioned. When Harehound tries to speak with his longtime confidant Lady Suir, an elegant elder hound, he learns that she is more concerned about the appearance of things rather than their reality. He then tries to find solace in Janice Lee, a passionate she hound, but learns he cannot escape from his newly discovered truth about the Hare. When his close friend Saint-Harry pleads for the truth about the Hare, Harehound at first refuses and then relents, but Saint Harry is unable to tolerate the uncertainty of knowing the Hare is not real and runs amok and comes to his end. Harehound discovers his anger and chases anew, this time-"in spite of" the fact that the hare is not real. But once again the mechanical hare tricks him as he almost catches it during the chase, but some mysterious force whisks it quickly from his grasp. Both horrified and outraged, he rebels on the track and tries to escape but is captured by the kennel keepers and taken to Hoop Home for Hounds, where he dreams all day and runs on the mountain at night while searching for clarity about the truth. He wonders why "the thing" and "chasing the thing" are both outrageous hoaxes, and does not understand what he has experienced. One day, while running for exercise on Hoop Mountain, he suddenly confronts a living hare. He chases and captures it but, as he wonders which one of them is the hare and which one the hound, he releases the hare, giving it freedom. He finally understands that his discovery is the essence of hare-hounding, of searching for the truth and, with relief and great joy, he begins coursing forward down the mountain, now unchecked, to explore the world with his newly found freedom to feel free.

About the Author :
Gary M. Koeppel grew up in Albany, Oregon, and spent his summers visiting his great aunt and uncle, a Coast Guard Captain and Keeper of the Heceta Head lighthouse. At night his aunt would peel apples in her rocking chair in front of the fireplace as she told spellbinding stories about their adventures while tending lighthouses on the Pacific Ocean along the Northwest coast. It is from her he credits his imagination. In college, Koeppel signed up for a creative writing class taught by Bernard Malamud, a renowned Jewish-American author, whose influence on him was soon realized. With a letter of recommendation from his writing mentor, Malamud, he received a graduate fellowship to the prestigious Writer's Workshop in Iowa City where Koeppel earned his way providing research for workshop founder Paul Engler and where he wrote his first novel, Harehound. But instead of publishing the book and becoming a writer, Koeppel was fearful that he had nothing to write about, so for the next seven years he taught writing and European literature as an English professor at universities in Iowa, Puerto Rico and Oregon. At Portland State University he developed a new method of teaching writing, which he called 'Experiential Composition' that involved assigning experiences to students they had to undertake and then write about in the first person to him as the audience. In 1968 Gestalt psychiatrist Fritz Perles of Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, learned of Koeppel's innovative teaching methods and invited him to teach writing to Esalen seminarians. Koeppel left Esalen and moved to Malibu where-at first as a hobby, then professionally-he developed a new kind of sand candle, became an American craftsman and wrote a book for Chilton titled Sculptured Sandcast Candles. He returned to Big Sur and bought the Coast Gallery in 1971, where he designed and rebuilt the gallery by recycling large, municipal redwood water tanks into an in-the-round complex that has become a historic architectural landmark on the Big Sur Coast. In 1978, to stop an attempt to federalize Big Sur as a National Park, he founded and published the Big Sur Gazette newspaper. As in David and Goliath, the Big Sur citizenry won the battle for Big Sur, and he learned the ancient lesson that the pen is more powerful than the sword.