Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls on: Observations Then and Now

by Frank Conroy

For thirty years, Frank Conroy's commentaries on life, music, and writing have appeared regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and GQ. DOGS BARK, BUT THE CARAVAN ROLLS... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 061815468X
• ISBN13: 9780618154685
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The Basic Imperative -- girls and music

This book perhaps falls within the genre of creative non-fiction. I guess Proust would fall into the category of fictionalized non-fiction. I'm not sure where the boundary lies. Just about every "story" (they are about real thoughts, feelings and people -- not fiction) is highly engaging and extremely well written. I'm not a professional writer -- just an amateur reader. The piece that caught me early in the collection was The Basic Imperative about how a teenage boy feels about his first love. He still knows how it feels! And the stories about various musicians. Once again, extremely well written and engaging. I happen to be smitten by the same musicians (Keith Jarrett, Marsalis, Serkin) so I may be positively prejudiced here. But I felt that I was actually there with those people, and later with the Rolling Stones. This is a must read book!

The Simple Pleasure of a Good Read

With the recent death of Frank Conroy, I remembered that I had purchased this book about a year ago after hearing him interviewed on NPR. My primary motivation in purchasing the book was to have a copy of the essay on his father that he read over the air. I've ended up with a lot more. I'm the type of person who thinks compulsively about good writing, what makes it, how I can move my own correspondence, office work, and creative writing toward something more beautiful, more pleasurable. I guess anyone with the most cursory knowledge of Conroy's life would be justifiably surprised if his writing turned out to be less than excellent. That's a given. But that he can write so well about nearly anything and take you along as a friend, a companion, speaking/writing so openly, so honestly, about life "things." If you have a best friend from high school or college, who has been there for the last twenty or thirty years, good times, bad times, and the vast expanses in between, think of the kinds of conversations that you have when it's just you two. That's how Conroy writes.

A revelation.

Yes, this book was a revelation to me. I am a writer wannabe, a pretender to the mantel of nonfiction writing. While I was searching blindly through the literature to find myself, my voice, perhaps an inspiration, I heard Frank Conroy interviewed on Michael Feldman's radio program on NPR. Conroy was talking about this very book. I was intrigued, I was interested. I went out, I bought the book. I read, and I learned, in the most pleasurable way possible. I was in the hands of a good writer, one that is able to carry me through his narrative and make his point with clarity and humor. I learned about jazz, about music in general. I learned about the Iowas Writers Workshop, what they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it. It was, alas, a short book, but it made me a more knowledgable person. It made me appreciate life. It made me excited about things I never thought I would be interested in, and I am excited about writing. What more can you ask for from a book?