Customer Reviews

The Dog Star

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Donald Windham's fame has been elusive over the past half century in comparison to his legendary buddies: Tennessee William, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Carson McCullers et al. But that doesn't make him any less of an artist. THE DOG STAR is dark and forboding. Written in amazing eloquence the novel has aquired a nostalgic flavor but in many ways forshadows the current problems of today's teens. So The Dog Star should also appeal to the Dawson's Creek crowd. One day, it will be required reading and Windham's hero will stand along side other American teen anti-heros such as Holden Caufield and Huck Finn and Windham himself will gain the respect and noteriety he so deserves. Donald Windham is one of the great unsung masters of twentieth century American Literature.

The opening line, "The dog star rose with the sun and the day was hot as soon as it was light," lets you know that Windham is a writer who loves words and language. This is a book filled with treasures, descriptions that will stay with you. While it is hard to imagine that the mind-ramblings and tribulations of a 15-year-old Atlanta juvenile delinquent in the 1930s are relevant to most readers, many of Blackie Pride's emotions resonated for me. Windham has painted a portrait that is evocative and touching. and pretty scary, without preaching or telling the reader what to think. Maybe I was particularly touched by this novel because we all are trying so hard now to understand young people, especially those who do not "fit in."

I am a fan of Donald Windham and have been for the past ten years. I feel he is one of the most important writers of the century and has never enjoyed the wide audience he so much deserves. I have always thought his Atlanta memoir, EMBLEMS OF CONDUCT, to be one of the best I've ever read. THE DOG STAR brilliantly covers much of the same terrain in many ways, but is fiction. Depression-era Atlanta is certainly not the Atlanta of today, but the themes that run through the pages of THE DOG STAR are timeless and should be read by everyone seriously interested in Southern literature.

This is a wonderful book, too long out of print. Blackie is a complex, dark character who is like so many young people today. Windham's style, at least as compelling as his friends and colleagues Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, is dense and well crafted. This is a lost classic.

Terrific book in English, but this version is a German translation, which is not immediately apparent in the advertising. Thomas Mann himself weighs in with a complimentary blurb -- in German.

The Dog Star is a marvelous, beautifully-written novel about a boy named Blackie Pride growing up in 1930's Atlanta. Predating most of the major concerns of Catcher in the Rye by a year, this is a underrated minor masterpiece of American fiction.

As a fan of Southern literature, I looked forward to reading "The Dog Star" but was let down by the slow, meandering pace of the book. There is really no plot at all, and to top it off, Blackie Pride is not the least bit likable. His supposed alienation seems like one big whine after another. Windham's overblown, overly descriptive style does nothing but add more confusion into the mix, and the resolution is completely predictable. Other than the fact that it takes place in Atlanta, there is nothing that feels "Southern" about the story, and the positive attention it has received because of this classification mystifies me.