Dear reader, before we begin my review, let me first explain to you how this book came into my life. I was browsing libro.fm's independent bookstore day sale (shout out to a real one) and saw this on the list of sale books. I looked at the cover, saw the tagline The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, and went "huh, seems cool, I've been interested in reading niche nonfiction about random topics, let's do this one." I did not, in fact, realize what the point of this book was. (Foreshadowing because I do not think this book realizes the point of itself either).

All that said, I sat down to read this book a captive audience with a very long train ride to sit and listen while I watch the scenery. Partway through the book, I wondered "who tf wrote this" and that is how I learned that this is not niche nonfiction to learn about a topic, but rather a book by a comedian. Which, in hindsight, makes a lot of sense.

So. How did I feel after having the wrong expectations and adjusting my view of what this should be? Still confused. This book can't decide if it wants to be a food blogger travelogue, trivia history of hot dogs, commentary on capitalism and class, or a weird diary of how Loftus and her boyfriend broke up over a long road trip. I think that it's reasonable to combine all of these into one book, maybe minus the weird diary part, I just don't think that Loftus is the author to do it.

We start out fairly solidly, with some history of hot dogs and getting us to the present day, looking at how it made its way to the US and how hot dogs are made. Then, we jump into road trip and "Hot Dog Summer." If the book had kept going along the path we started out on, I would have enjoyed it more. It was a bit all over the place, but felt like it had direction and a story to tell.

Once we got beyond the beginning, I often felt whiplash from jumping from detailed hot dog descriptions to the sociopolitical issues surrounding the food/vendor/area to cramming in a bunch of history tangents. There wasn't a smooth segue between these subjects and it was particularly noticeable when Loftus would recount a horrific fact, then jump to a non sequitur, travel tidbits, history factoid, her boyfriend, whatever. I started taking notes at the end, but one example is how she described a white hot dog entrepreneur loving the hot dogs prepared by a nice Hispanic lady, who the community literally drove by and kicked dirt from their cars onto her (hence his mom coining the hot dogs "dirt dogs," which is how his business got its name), and then just ripping off what she'd done and getting famous for it. No time for processing this, we just speed right on into descriptions of the food and the declaration that they're delicious.

Loftus often does acknowledge and make clear her feelings about many of the sociopolitical issues that are intertwined with the history and current present of hot dogs. But it feels perfunctory, like she know it'll look bad if she doesn't frown obviously, so you know she's not like that.

Maybe it's that I wasn't expecting a travelogue, but this just didn't quite hit the mark for me. The humor was very hit and miss, but that's quite subjective and if you already like Loftus's work (this was my first intro to her), then you likely have a good idea of whether or not that works for you. That said, we get 2 stars because it was humorous just often enough, it made the hours on the train pass by, and the beginning was interesting enough.

Raw Dog is light-hearted, vulgar, and appropriately entertaining.

I am, unfortunately, a killjoy. Yes I hate fun, yes I take everything way too seriously. Naturally, I didn't enjoy this book.

Jamie Loftus' humor is not my cup of tea. I absolutely despise when I can feel the author's intention to make me laugh behind the text. It's a feeling similar to a Buzzfeed article that relies on quippy one-liners to extract a slight exhale of air as a laugh - a bit forced, a bit too on-the-nose, a bit of over-reliance on low-hanging fruit.

This is my first introduction to Loftus, and how she relies heavily, emphasis on heavily, on vulgarity for a large majority of her jokes. I can't tell you how many times I was subjected to a joke about her diarrhea, or to condiments looking like cum or period blood, or comparisons to genitals, or jokes about people having sex.

I wouldn't call myself a prude, and I obviously expected some of this. I mean the book is titled Raw Dog for God's sake. But is it necessary to describe every single experience with the same no-brainer crudeness? It's like being around that person that can't have a normal conversation and has to make everything sexual or gross for shock value.

The book is entirely hinged on this humor, on the centering of Loftus to the point that the book is more memoir than food history. What should be the star of the show, the hot dog and its history, seems to always take a backseat to Loftus, her surface-level observations, and her endless complaints.

There's a self-deprecating tone to much of her reflections that gets old quickly. Loftus talking about her eating disorder and body image issues, about feeling like shit for eating so many hot dogs, about how "complicated" it is to hate capitalism and still want to support corporate cash grabs like the Dodger Dog merchandise. Between this and the crude humor, the book is repetitive to a fault, and an exhausted feeling creeps in by the halfway point.

While I appreciated the inclusion of more leftist-informed values, like talking about labor rights, American exceptionalism, racism, and class, the politics often stop short of anything meaningful. It's more a vague gesturing at surface-level systemic critique than a commentary on anything useful.

Of course, I didn't expect academic level political commentary, but Loftus' tendency to talk about something horrific like police brutality, followed by a joke about sharts, was frankly distasteful. The deeply unserious tone completely ruined any aspect of political or historical commentary for me.

At the risk of being the friend that's too woke, I left this book with an overall sense of subtle classism. Hot dogs don't have to be treated like some holy grail, Michelin star meal, but it is undeniable, as Loftus herself points out, that the hot dog is closely related to the working class and is well-known as a "poverty food".

When the book is built around these hot dog joints, which often requires traveling through more impoverished areas of the country, and the jokes revolve around making fun of how shitty the food is, how shitty Loftus feels for eating it, and how "backwards" the people are, it just leaves a rotten taste in my mouth.

I recognize that Jamie Loftus tried to include as much history as possible within such a limited space, while also balancing the entertainment value of the book. It's a book about a road trip dedicated to eating hot dogs, so of course it's not going to take itself too seriously, and I absolutely didn't expect it to!

However, Raw Dog had a lot more potential to be a biting commentary on sociopolitical issues using the hot dog as a vehicle. Everyone knows the hot dog represents good ol' American exceptionalist values, and its history is clearly interestingly intertwined with different political issues that could have been explored in detail.

Unfortunately, every aspect of the book falls flat, propelled by humor that's so painfully unfunny that it's more likely to elicit a pity laugh than anything.