Books : Dog Years: A Memoir (P.S.)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780061171017
ISBN: 0061171018
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: April 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: April 08, 2008
Sales Rank: 41481
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Product Description:
When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he brings home Beau, a large, malnourished golden retriever in need of loving care. Joining Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family, Beau bounds back into life. Before long, the two dogs become Doty's intimate companions, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days.
Dog Years is a poignant, intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about living, love, and loss.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Although he talks about his dogs, this is more about his views on life and his lame attempt to turn his poetry into prose. He should stick to writing poetry so that I won't be tricked into reading his verbose and idiosyncratic perceptions of reality. If you're looking for insight into dog-human relationships, look elsewhere.
Rating: -
I found the entire book clinical and emotionless. Doty is a master at the use of figurative language, but he has no sense of character.
He spends a lot of time creating elaborate metaphors and meditations on the nature of life and death and the vagueness of language. Yet they have no resonance because he never properly introduces us to the people about whom he has these deep thoughts. He forces us into the perspective of studying extremely emotional events from a detached, academic point of view.
Doty never takes the time to introduce us to his first lover Wally, for example. We never meet Wally, are never allowed to hear Wally's voice and never learn what it is about Wally that Doty finds so lovable. So when Wally dies, it feels oddly abrupt and flat. Doty's meditations on the nature of life and death would have much more resonance if he would allow us a glimmer into his emotional life as well as his intellectual life.
To use a Doty-esque metaphor, the book feels like a statue where the artist has worked painstakingly on details like the texture of the skin and hair or the ripples of a garment, but he has failed to carve a face or even the shape of a human being. It's as if all of these pieces are lying about without anything to connect them. So while you can appreciate the skill of these little sketches, Doty never assembles them into what could be a fully-formed work of art.
Rating:  -
As an owner of two dachshunds, Dog Years struck a deep chord within me. Doty touches deeply on the uniqueness of each beloved animal, and does so with grace and sensitivity. To me, the book was largely a metaphor for life, which is surrounded by both love and pain, both of which are amplified as we grow older. In this sense, Dog Years was very much a memoir about Doty's life following the death of his partner, Wally. Dog Years is more poetic than his earlier memoirs, possibly because the challenges of advancing years are not as concrete as surviving a difficult childhood (Firebird) or the death of a spouse (Heaven's Coast). But this format works well for me, and it seemed to work well for Doty. Thank you, Mark, for sharing this new phase of your life with us.
Rating:  -
I was really looking forward to Doty's so-called memoir, Dog Years, but it just didn't deliver. While there are some fine and moving passages here and there about loss and loving an animal, this book doesn't really qualify as a true "memoir," and it's not much of a "dog book" either. If you want to read a good dog book/memoir, try Hal Borland's classic, The Dog Who Came to Stay. It's great. Doty's effort simply strays too far afield from either genre to suit my apparently plebian tastes. There are sections here, littered with quotes from Emily Dickinson and Doty's ruminations on same, or references to Cezanne or Heraclitus, which could have been lifted from his Freshman poetry lectures, which is not what I expected - or wanted. Maybe there is so little about Doty because he's already written two memoirs. Well, okay; but don't call this a memoir, because it's not. I'm tempted to read his first memoir; maybe that would be a real one, but this book is sub-titled under false pretenses. The narrative meanders here and there and sometimes I wondered where the hell he was going with it. It was a struggle just to finish it. Sorry, Mark. Write a memoir or write poetry, but don't try to do both at once. - Tim Bazzett, author of Pinhead: A Love Story
Rating: -
Mark Doty has penned an absolute gem of a memoir that touches not only on our umbreakable bonds with our animals, but also with our mates and the many places that we will call "home" throughout our lives - and the grief that we all must embrace and learn from in the loss of all of these. His story of Wally, Arden and Beau is a masterpiece of the heartfelt thoughts and feelings that all dog owners will experience if they are lucky enough to be loved unconditionally by one, or more, beloved human beings and furry angels.
In Chapter 15, after the recent death of his mate, Wally, and one of his dogs, Beau, Doty tells us of an abandoned dog that he befriends on Calle Canal in San Miquel de Allende, a hill town north of Mexico City.
He tries to rescue her and is heartbroken to have to leave her behind, writing, "I am grateful to have felt even this sharp sadness. The dog on Calle Canal awakens me; she shows me that I have come through something now. I write to bless her delicate head, the paw raised in hope. How should we know ourselves, except in the clarifying mirror of some other gaze?"
I finished the book in one day. And if you aren't into full throttle tears by Chapter 16 & 17 (the final chapters), then you have never known the joy and anticipation of there being "someone at home, waiting to go for a walk."
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