fish of the day

… one of the beach boys climbed to the highest rock and waved a red shirt, shouting, ‘Pesce cane! Pesce cane!’ All the swimmers turned, howling with excitement and kicking up a heavy surf, and swam for the shore. Over the bar where they had been one could see the fin of a shark …
(from “The Golden Age” by John Cheever)

so apparently Italians, or those of the part of southern Italy where Cheever’s protagonist is on holiday, call shark “fish dog”

and apparently Pinocchio was swallowed by a shark: "il terribile pesce-cane" (the Terrible Dog-fish), also known as "l'Atilla dei pesci e dei pescatori" (the Atilla of fish and fishermen).

actually, I don’t really get Cheever ("Chekhov of the suburbs").
Maybe in small doses, one story a month say, in comparison with the other lighter-hearted pieces in the “New Yorker” or “Playboy”, his depressing observations of middle-class America might be ok, but I’m currently working my way through the 890-page “Collected Stories”, more than 60 of them. Day after day, breakfast after breakfast or bedtime after bedtime, their toll mounts up.