My Dog Tulip

Rating:
Summary: Reviewers Trash Classic!!!
Review: Being a dog lover but not a dog owner who believes that it is cruel to keep most dogs in an urban environment, and especially a large dog in a flat as the author did, I found this memoir not to be my cup of tea. Humans are portrayed in it as curious, rather unsympathetic creatures, whilst the dog at the center of his love, is romanticised despite the loving detail with which the author describes the bodily functions of the animal. I can understand though, its appeal to those with an obsession with their dog who find humans too argumentative, contrary or difficult. An instance of "horses for courses" so to speak.

Rating:
Summary: Something new
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Possibly good for potential dog breeders
Review: I liked this book, although as a dog owner I found myself shaking my head and shocked at many of the things that were done with this dog... I do think this is a great book for anyone who is thinking of breeding their dog as it gives a good account of the trials of breeding, raising puppies, and the problems that can occur for the pups and mother.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Dog of a Book ... and Not in a Good Way
Review: If you want to be immersed in a definitely 1960's I'm-obsessed-with-Freud take on dog ownership from someone who should never have been allowed to own a dog ... if you're dying to discover in ad nauseum detail the fecal and urinary habits of an animal whose owner lacks the least understanding of training a dog ... if you yearn for all the details of the miseries this animal goes through whenever she's in heat, this is the book for you.

One has to wonder at the dark workings of Ackerley's psyche. There's a strident and distressing pornographical note that sounds throughout the book as he writes of his beloved Tulip. Here he is, writing of the first time she goes into heat: "I was enchanted. That small dark bud, her vulva, became gradually swollen and more noticeable amid the light gray fur of her thighs as she walked ahead of me, and sometimes it would set up, I supposed, a tickle or a trickle or some other sensation, for she would suddenly squat down in the road and fall to licking it. At such moments I could see how much lager it had grown and the pretty pink of its lining ... I felt very sweet toward her. She also felt very sweet towards me." He goes on to describe in great detail how she mounts his leg and what that's like for the 2 of them. And it's not as if this is a one-time thing.

No, folks, the ENTIRE book is a treatise detailing such events: "Now, squatting here and there upon other dogs' droppings... like some famous chef adding to a prepared dish the final exquisite flavor, the crowning touch, she left behind her in the snow as she flew a series of sorbets, and her crazed attendants were so often and so long delayed in licking them up that they eventually fell far behind."

This is not exactly the kind of thing I care to discover about an animal, however charming the dog herself might be. But what REALLY disturbed me was the misery Ackerley put this poor animal through in his obsession to find her "a husband." Worse still, once she finally managed to produce a litter, Ackerley's inclination, was to kill all the pups. "In the bathroom ... I prepared a bucket of water and a flour sack weighted with such heavy objects as I could lay my hands on ... How could I distract proud Tulip's attention while I carried out my dark deed? Soon, no doubt, she would wish to relieve nature and my chance would come."

If this is the kind of a boy-and-his-dog relationship you want to know more about, go for it. Personally, I was left feeling I'd exposed myself to the dark workings of a pretty twisted mind, and I wish I hadn't learned there are people of relate to animals the way Ackereley does.

Rating:
Summary: If alive today, Ackerley would be a spokesman for the SPCA
Review: In "My Dog Tulip," J.R. Ackerley reflects on the joys and frustrations of owning an animal. Throughout the years of his dog's life, Ackerley strove (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) to meet the needs of this creature so different from himself. He writes in awe of and love for his dog, but he also writes of the vicissitudes of life with a canine-defecation accidents, periods of heat, veterinary visits.

I like this book primarily because Ackerley loves dogs as dogs, not as humans with fur and a tail, as pets to be brought under human will, or as objects to be bought and sold. Writes Ackerley, "Stupidly loved, stupidly hated, acquired without thought, reared and ruled without understanding, passed on or `put to sleep' without care, did they, I wondered, these descendants of the creatures who, thousands of years ago in the primeval forests, laid siege to the heart of man, took him under their protection, tried to tame him, and failed-did they suffer?"


Rating:
Summary: "a marvel of brilliance and shockingness"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and Touching
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A dark and compelling study of what it means to be "animal"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: An unsparing but affecting look at canine proclivities
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Reviewers Trash Classic!!!
Review: Who is Kerry Fried, and why is s/he reviewing this classic? I read this book several years ago. As a story of a female shepherd and her owner, it is brutally honest, to the detail. Ackerley as a dog person, seems so indulgent and feeble. While reading, one must be mindful that the events took place in the 40's and in Briton. Perhaps he never had a dog before, and knew no better. Pups, off leash adventures, pooping issues. As subject matter, who but another shepherd lover would care. Who but a post modern dog lover would be appalled at the old fashioned beliefs and attitudes. But, and this is critical, but, the language is beautiful, the sentiment expressed is pure. And the final chapter, and final paragraph, are exquisite. I feel the passing of her life from his own, his long life stretching out so far beyond her sweet existence within it. I love my dog Olk as dearly, and dread his eventual loss.

Nancy