Author: Ken Foster, Editor
Publisher: GLOBE PEQUOT ( THE LYONS PRESS, FALCON), Sep 2002
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 1-58574-600-2
Synopsis
Celebrated contemporary writers explore various aspects of dog life in the 21st century. Each of these pieces is both about a specific dog & about all dogs, & life, & how we choose to live it. B&W photos; 5x7 inches, 224 pgs.
More Information
The last thing editor Ken Foster wanted was a collection of otherwise intelligent people droning on and on about their own dogs. And yet it quickly became apparent that this was nearly impossible to avoid?after all, what better example of love or disobedience is there than one?s own dog? Like the best writing on anything, however, each of these pieces is both about a specific dog and about all dogs, and, most importantly, about something bigger and more essential than dogs themselves: Life, and how we choose to live it.
The twelve narratives in this collection center on the power of a dog?s personality to shape the way we see and live our own lives. Here are best-selling authors Nicholas Dawidoff, on needing obedience school as much as his dog, and Chuck Palahniuk, on the otherworldly job of rescue dogs. Rene Steinke describes the shameful gluttony of her boyfriend?s dog; Pearl Abraham writes of sneaking a dog into her life in defiance of the Hasidic community in which she was raised; and Chris Offutt reminisces about the Kentucky dog of his childhood, locked out of the house, injured with buckshot, but still deeply loved. Elissa Schappell gives us the other side of the coin in her hilarious treatise against dogs.
With black-and-white images of the inscrutable canines that inhabit our landscape, this book will surprise, entrance, and make even the most skeptical dog observer see the world in a new way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ken Foster is the author of The Kind I?m Likely to Get, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and editor of The KGB Bar Reader, the anthology Harper?s called ?one of the strongest collections of new writing available.? He has written for The New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, Village Voice, McSweeney?s, and others. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Sewanee Writers Conference, Foster teaches at the New School and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. He lives with his dog, Brando, in New York City.
