Customer Reviews

My Dog Tulip (New York Review Books Classics)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

So much more than a book about a man and his dog--I laughed, I cried. I laughed more than I cried as the author's way with words grew on me. Several months ago I heard about this book and author for the first time. The book was out of print and I could not find a copy online. I stumbled upon this new edition while browsing online and am so glad that I "waited" for this new version. The book is very attractive and unusual and I enjoyed the introduction which is new too. I'm now reading another book in this same new collection about the author's life--My Father and Myself--it puts My Dog Tulip into a new perspective and I may have to re-read it and if I do, I think I might cry more than I laugh this time around. Although when I looked again at the cover I had a private laugh. I'd recommend this book to almost anyone of any age. Parental guidance perhaps for My Father and Myself.

In fact that was from a review of some 45 years ago, but it will do for a title.

I think My Dog Tulip is possibly the best book about dogs I have ever read. It doesn't suprise me to see that Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (The Hidden Life of Dogs) has written the introduction to the current edition, as Ackerley opened up some of the territory she was to explore. They remind me of each other quite a lot.

In the first scene of My Dog Tulip, Ackerley meets a little old lady wheeling a little dog around the park in a pram. The dog is dressed up in a blanket and she is cooing to him like an invalid. It's obvious that this highly anthropomorphised canine is the sort of dog Ackerley wants NOT to portray. He commented at the time that he wanted to restore beastliness to beasts, and as E.M. Forster put it, Tulip is 'a dog of dogdom', not just 'an appendage of man.'

My Dog Tulip lampoons the British middle class as well as human anthropocentrism in general. Ackerley's technique of combining shocking subject matter with a genteel, decorous prose style is always a joy to read. It's also definately the main reason he managed to get away with publishing this book in 1956. It's no small measure of the success of this balancing act, that a book which still manages to upset a minority of readers in 2001 was published in 1956 to general critical acclaim.

What you get, if you buy My Dog Tulip, is a very detailed account of Ackerley's life with his dog Queenie (he changed the name to Tulip, only after it was suggested to him that 'Queenie' might cause some tittilation, as Ackerley had been a somewhat outspoken member of London's gay community for some time). At times it is hilarious - never more so than when he's poking fun at English propriety. At other times it is very touching, and at others there is a barely concealed anger against human arrogance. Yes, there are many, detailed descriptions of canine bodily functions - one chapter is titled 'Liquids and solids'. In my view Ackerley pulls this off with complete dignitiy, even if I'm reminded of Salvador Dali explaining to a shocked society lady how he covers himself with filth when he paints, but in order to attract "only the cleanest flies."

When the real Queenie died, Ackerley was devestated, and never really recovered. The greatest achievement of My Dog Tulip is its final chapter 'The Turn of the Screw', where suddenly the style of the writing changes; the comic veneer is dropped, and suddenly all the imagery about life, death and reproduction make sense. Tulip is still with him, but time is against them. It is one of the most beautiful and moving ruminations on mortality that I've read.

It's hard for me to understand how some of the reviewers could have failed to appreciate Ackerley. If you've ever owned any kind of pet at all, this book is a must. To be sure, it's not for the squeamish--Tulip's romantic life is the one of the chief topics, and the author minces no words describing the tactics deployed by Tulip, her many canine suitors, and even her owner himself in his attempts to produce true-blooded offspring. But Ackerley approaches even this sensitive subject with both humor and a strange sweetness. He once wrote that Tulip was his true love, the only creature who loved him and whom he could love unconditionally, and after you read the book, you understand why. Tulip's character--defensive, offensive, protective, delicate, beautiful, affectionate, and ever-so-vital--is as moving as any portrayal of a mere human. Unmissable.

When "My Dog Tulip" was first published in 1956, it elicited both praise and derision from England's literati. Ackerley's colleague E. M. Forster hailed the book; Edith Sitwell declared it "filth." The most balanced and reasonable reading may have been from the novelist Julia Strachey, who noted in a private letter, "though entirely about dogs, [it] is a veritable little marvel of brilliance and shockingness. I don't know when I read anything so indecent, disgusting, touching, beautiful, and stylish." In spite of the critical attention, however, the book sold abysmally: two years later, half the first printing was still in storage, and no American publisher would touch it for nearly a decade. (Most of these details are culled from Peter Parker's excellent biography of Ackerley.)

Although many people consider it a classic (and I too found it moving and extraordinarily witty), "Tulip" has only recently found an audience. The reticence and revulsion that even today greets this little book is usually in three forms. First, Ackerley wrote neither a cute book for dog lovers nor a user's manual; most of the book describes the sex life (real and frustrated) and excretory functions of his dog (whose real name was Queenie). Like Ackerley's other books, this one is intended to shock and occasionally disgust, and Ackerley seems positively obsessed with Tulip`s libidinous needs and toiletry habits--so much so that his British publisher submitted it for legal review before printing it. Second, many of today's animal lovers are upset by a scene in which Ackerley considers killing some of Tulip's offspring. Never mind that he ultimately doesn't have the heart to do it: this practice was all too common fifty years ago, when neutering was not widely available. And, third--and perhaps most seriously--Ackerley certainly comes across as a curmudgeon (if not a downright creep), and his scorn of the "working classes" is harsh on egalitarian ears.

But this book ultimately won me over. From the descriptions of Tulip's inopportune venues for defecation to Ackerley's hysterical attempts to find the proper mate for his beloved Alsatian, the humor, warmth, and playfulness of "My Dog Tulip" should appeal to most readers and especially to dog owners.

If you love or ever have loved a dog of any breed, you'll take something away from reading this book. Recommended to me, I didn't think this was my breed of book, but it turned out to be. It's that kind of book, which is why I'm now ordering a copy as a gift for a friend who I think will like it, but would probably never find it. I'd recommend both reading it since you've found it (you are reading this review, right?) and if you also give a copy away and it's not your friend's breed of book...at least it also happens to look good.

P.47: "Dogs read the world through their noses and write their history in urine." As his favorite vet, Miss Canvey, says (p.20), "One has to put oneself in their position." Ackerley does.

More than any other book I've seen reviewed on Amazon, this one has lovers and haters and very few in between. Some of the haters haven't read the book. Two say he drowns the puppies, but he does not. Some refer to Freud, but what anything in the book has to do with Freud is beyond me. I don't think they've read Freud either. They find the book disturbing, and that it is. There's nothing wrong with hating the book, of course; but some find the author sick or perverted, and that seems a stretch.

Much of what Ackerley reveals about dogs is common knowledge, but apparently wasn't always. All if it is here: the strangeness of their world and, despite the strangeness, their love for us and our love for them.

P.S. Ackerley refers to Tulip as an Alsatian. This reads as a prudery today. Alsatians are to German Shepherds as Salisbury steaks are to hamburgers, or as freedom fries are to French fries.

The mistake that's always made with this book is to see it (or worse, market it) as a cute little study of dog love--a kind of non-fiction equivalent, say, to LASSIE COME HOME. Ackerley's MY DOG TULIP is much better than that, and it's about as far from cute as you might imagine. Tulip does not emerge as very lovable at all: she barks and rushes and she makes messes and she seems to be constantly in heat. Ackerley's narrator, however, loves her no less for all this, and indeed seems wedded to her not only in spite of but because of her distressing physicality. The point this study is making is that to be an animal--like Tulip, or like her master--is to have a very unloveable body that needs to defecate and mate and bump into things. As we read further, we notice how the narrator's manners are not only at odds with these aspects of Tulip, but also with his own less-lovable traits: his jealousy, his snobbishness, his sense of entitlement. This is, in the end, largely a study of manners--and what manners must conceal in both dogs AND humans. If you take it as its meant, this is a very compelling little book.

I admit I skimmed over, towards the end, some of Ackerley's agonized accounts of Tulip's heats. But I relished most of the book, and I am as grateful to the author as I am to any writer who does something authentically new and different, and does it well. This book should be read in conjunction with Ackerley's other books, especially "My Father and Myself." By itself "Tulip" may seem to be the document of a very strange man, but considered with Ackerley's whole output it comes to look like just the most groping and unflinchingly honest of Ackerley's remarkably free and honest writings. Frankly it's amazing that a book written more than 30 years ago, on a topic (the lives of animals) at the center of contemporary worry and action, should seem so advanced, and just so ... beyond the pale. And, of course, Ackerley's prose is faultless. Every serious reader should give this book a chance.

I purchased this book because it had appeared as "one of the best dog books ever written" on a list of books by another author whom I enjoy. It is a delightful little book, I must admit; I did enjoy reading it and am glad I did. However, I found myself wondering as I did WHY I was spending so much time reading about the love life of Tulip and the difficulties thereof. Also, the book is a bit dated--set in pre-1950 England. While that doesn't affect the enjoyment of the story, I think it does mean that there has been time for other excellent books about dogs to have been written and published. I gave this 4 stars because it is an excellent read, but I do think that "Merle's Door" is all in all a better book, whether one is a dog lover or not. I'd give that one 5 stars. If the reader actually owns a German Shepherd, I am sure that this book would rank up in the 5 star range. For the non-Shepherd dog owner, or any reader, the joy of the book is in how the author uses the language; he has a witty turn of phrase and an entertaining way of describing events.

Actually, I have a previous edition of this book, which I read after seeing the movie "We Think the World of You," starring Alan Bates and Gary Oldman. Reading both books (this one nonfiction, the other true but "novelized" to avoid trouble with Queenie's original owner) will give you a full sense of how Ackerley came to own Tulip (a.k.a. Queenie)--or rather, how she came to own him--and I highly recommend the beautiful film (with an untrained German shepherd who was nonetheless perfect in her role).