Customer Reviews:
A book which stays forever in the heart of an addict child and for parents.......2005-08-05
My wayward child at age 13 gave this book to me for a Christmas present. I then knew who he was and is for the first time. As he has matured into adulthood 20 years later, this book is still one of his favorites and mine, too. There are many of us in the world who are too gentle to live among the wolves.
appropriate for 2004.......2004-02-02
i have had this record for years and find it's contents applicable to today's happenings as it was in the '70's. i would so like to get it on cd so my brother could hear it; he's unable to read. amazon says not s\availale; am wondering if anyone knows when it might be or where else i could purchase it. thank you
it made me cry, and saved me in a desparate hour.......1999-09-25
i was drawn to this book, for an unknown reason....i picked it up, and bought it for 50 cents at a thrift shop. i did't read it right away... i saved it....and then the day came, i was real down; i read this book, and realized that it soounded like every single word that had been running through my mind....put together in a beautiful masterpiece, that i couldn't have said better. it helped me get through the day, so i could live another one. i thank james kavanaugh, for writeing this book, and helping me realize there are others like me, out there, in this world with "IBM eyes".
Amazon.com
"The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you." So Barry Lopez writes in his first major work of nonfiction, a careful study of the way that wolves and humans have interacted over centuries, and the way that the wolf has become so central to our thinking about animals. Drawing on considerable personal experience with wolves and on an astonishing range of literature, Lopez argues for the necessity of wolves in the world, which would be much poorer without their howl. Thanks in part to the influence of this essential book about Canis lupus, first published in 1978, we know a great deal more about wolves and are all the better prepared to assure their protection.
Book Description
Originally published in 1978, this special twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the National Book Award finalist includes an entirely new afterword in which the author considers the current state of knowledge about wolves and recent efforts to reintroduce wolves to their former habitats in American wilderness areas.
Humankind's relationship with the wolf is based on a spectrum of responses running from fear to admiration and affection. Lopez's classic, careful study won praise from a wide range of reviewers and went on to improve the way books about wild animals are written. Of Wolves and Men reveals the uneasy interaction between wolves and civilization over the centuries, and the wolf's prominence in our thoughts about wild creatures. Drawing on an astonishing array of literature, history, science, and mythology as well as considerable personal experience with captive and free-ranging wolves, Lopez argues for the necessity of the wolf's preservation and envelops the reader in its sensory world, creating a compelling picture of the wolf both as real animal and as imagined by man. A scientist might perceive the wolf as defined by research data, while an Eskimo hunter sees a family provider much like himself. For many Native Americans the wolf is also a spiritual symbol, a respected animal that can make both the individual and the community stronger. With irresistible charm and elegance, Of Wolves and Men celebrates scientific fieldwork, dispels folklore that has enabled the Western mind to demonize wolves, explains myths, and honors indigenous traditions, allowing us to further understand how this incredible animal has come to live so strongly in the human heart.
Customer Reviews:
Each blind person "sees" the elephant differently........2007-09-03
There are lots of books out there, from erudite texts to the lowly mass media publications (the ones I usually read at my friendly neighborhood Borders). What is unique about each is what the author brings to the subject. I only ask that when they interpret an observation they let you know. Unlike "Never Cry Wolf : Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves" where the author actually states that he, "never lets facts get in the way of the truth" Lopez has tried to stick to the facts to the best of his abilities, even to asking the help of David Mech, arguably the world's leading expert on the Wolf. Of notable interest is Lopez's accurate debunking of the "alpha" animal. This term has been perpetuated by dozens of dog "experts" who completely misunderstand pack mentality (dog or wolf) and the variable nature of alpha behavior. Lopez doesn't tell you where the term comes from (a mostly disproved 1940's study by Rudolph Schenkel who studied about 10 wolves in a 900 square foot pen and picked up by researchers in the '60s) or what was being studied (unrelated and/or orphaned wolves in captivity - NOT real wolf packs), but he does tell you that it is misleading. But then again, this is Lopez's book and not a scientific tome.
As to comments about not being enough about wolves, I think it's important for us to understand how "we" see this terribly misunderstood animal. As Walt Kelly's Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
For those who want serious, studiousnessability wolf stuff, see Mech's "Wolves -Behavior, Ecology and Conservation"
And finally, ff you want to save a few bucks, skip the hard-cover version and go with the paperback edition reissued in 2004 with an enlarged bibliography and a few extra words from the author. It's a worthwhile read both for learning more about the wolf and learning more about who we are. If you love animals, you'll enjoy the former and be uncomforted by the latter.
Comprehensive and compelling.......2007-08-11
Great book! Adding to current scientific information, the author goes further, into extensive discriptions of the poetry and myth by which we hold the wolf in our imaginations. I especially liked the variety of Native American interpretations of the meaning of the wolf.
Fascinating, haunting..........2006-08-02
What a fascinating read and what a majestic animal! I was saddened to read about how the Wolf was systematically killed in many parts of the US in decades gone by. Its soothing to know that biologists are working actively to preserve the remaining wolf populations. This book will bring you a fresh perspective of our environment.
I wish I could give it all the stars in the sky..........2006-04-09
This book should be required reading for everyone. Lopez, a superior author in his own right, created THE classic book on wolf behavior and on the relationship between wolves and humans from ancient to modern times.
The first few chapters deal with wolf biology and behavior, and dispel many of the myths--including the idea that nobody has ever been attacked by a healthy wolf in North America (nobody, apparently, thought to check with American Indian experience in history). It's a very, very thorough exploration of the wolf as a mammal, as an animal.
Then Lopez goes into the tangled thornbush of wolf mythology and folklore, and how it affected the way humans slaughtered wolves (or revered them), and how the two fed off of eachother and built up the human (mis)conception of the wolf that has only recently been shattered.
There's a lot of heartbreaking information about wolf hunting, and just how devastated the wolf population has been. Reduced to a fraction of their former range, it's amazing that wolves even still exist.
This book is a must-read, not only for wolf lovers, but for everyone to understand why we have so abused the natural world. For many people, the wolf IS the wild, and how we treat the wolf mirrors how we treat the wild.
Too much about humans.......2005-09-10
This may be obvious by the title, but I'm going to say it anyway. This book deals mostly with humans relationship with wolves, not the wolves themselves. There is a lot of mystical and historical information about how humans have dealt with wolves. The few chapters dealing with how wolves behave and live were well written, but far too short and did not contain enough information for me.
Book Description
A stirring and vivid novel about a white boy raised among natives on the harsh Alaskan tundra, Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what most people have ever known. In its pages, Cutuk, a boy equally uncomfortable in the ways of whites and Inupiaq, tells of his youth and young adulthood: of his father, who brought his family to Alaska from Chicago before Cutuk's birth; of his adopted Inupiaq family; and of the vast Arctic expanse beneath the frozen sky. It is here that Cutuk grows up - hunting, fishing, and living off the land, far away from the grinding, yet beckoning, machine of consumer culture.
Dispelling all mythical visions of Alaska, this evocative novel leads readers down its true trails, to feel the icy pinch of cold, to hunker as blizzards moan overhead. And in the twilit spaces from which animals appear are the wolves - and Cutuk's father - living their lives out on the tundra, unobtrusive, unapologetic, uninvolved in the world beyond.
Customer Reviews:
Give yourself a treat.......2007-05-12
One of the best books I have read. The different perspectives Kantner shares are well written and humananly believable. If you like people, travel, animals, and a good story - you will love this.
Ordinary Wolves.......2007-01-12
Ordinary Wolves offers an experience beyond reading. Like its setting, the cold, dry desert of northwest Alaska, it is harsh, often uncomfortable, and beautiful. Seth Kantner doesn't flinch from telling the truth about life in the far North, from the perspective of a young man caught between two worlds and totally comfortable in neither. Alaskan village life, including its generational conflicts, pervasive violence, and desperate substance abuse, is presented with both honesty and understanding. Equally searing is Kantner's portrayal of Anchorage's seamy underbelly. But for me, the solid core of the book is the nature of the relationship between humans and wild animals, ranging from the respect of the traditional Inupiat hunter for the animal who dies to give people sustenance to the perception of animals as trophies, to be hunted from airplanes, mutilated, and hung on rec room walls. The displacement faced by Alaskan natives, torn between traditional Inupiat values and the commercialized consumerism of white America, is complex, and Kantner doesn't try to oversimplify it. He illuminates it; he clearly feels it to his marrow, and he makes the reader feel it too.
Village Life.......2006-12-05
"Now if I survived verbs and prepositions and onomatopoeias of my English grammar class I could break through the willows into wide-open life. Whatever that was. Mr. Standle, one of the new teachers, said any life I chose would need grammar, but he was a States person, and it sounded like they spent too much of their lives doing the paperwork, getting prepared to live." That's me, a Mr. Strandle, a States person working on my fifth winter in Alaska and my second in The Village. Read that passage again and think of how much depth and explanation is crammed into just that paragraph.
Buy this book and read it twice. Then buy five copies and give them to people for no reason. It is that good. I've never seen a true account of the between worlds life that the village is like. I'm not saying this will show you everything about what it is like to grow up native or white in rural Alaska, but it might give you a hint of a world most people don't realize still exists in America.
Yes it meanders and wanders around. Yes the story seems to have no point. But, just like Cutuk says, so do the stories elders tell. And yes there are Inupiaq words dropped in, seemingly randomly, forcing you to learn something of another language. And this is also like the stories locals tell.
Not for the squeamish.......2006-11-13
The narrator of Ordinary Wolves, blue-eyed blonde Cutuk Hawkley, aka "Yellow Hair" is five years old as the story begins, living with his brother, (ten year old Jerry), sister, (eight year old Iris), and artist father Abe in an igloo made of sod, logs and poles a dog-sled's ride away from the nearest village in the Alaskan tundra, the entire family having been abandoned by his mother. By the end of the novel, twenty years have gone by with Cutuk in a continuous battle to fit in with the locals, especially difficult with his European features, even though his family lives the life of the most reclusive Eskimo. Prepare for some squeamish moments as you read about hunting, killing, eating (think of a "Survivor Alaska" contest) and living in the wild.
Although the glossary contains 75 Iñupiaq words that are used frequently throughout the book (causing some switching back and forth to find out the meanings at times) and dialog often contains a confusing mixture of English and Iñupiaq, it is worth the effort to follow this boy, youth, and eventually, man on his journey through life. Companion reads include Smila's Sense of Snow, The Call of the Wild, To Build a Fire, Into the Wild, The Good Rain, and a children's book, Alaska's Three Pigs.
WOW Please write another book.......2006-05-22
Great book!! An incredible look at another world. Very good read all the way through. Great sense of humor.
Book Description
Why did Americans hate wolves for centuries? And, given the ferocity of this loathing, why are Americans now so protective of the animals? In this provocative history of wolves in America—and of the humans who have hated and loved them—Jon Coleman investigates the sometimes violent and always controversial relationship between the two species.
"With lively prose and copious detail (Coleman) deftly weaves together the histories of settler and lupine societies. . . . Provocative, scholarly, scholarly, and readable."—Karen R. Jones, Journal of American History
"Thoughtfully conceived, insightful, and well written, Vicious is a wicked good read."—Andrew Kirk, Montana: The Magazine of Western History
Customer Reviews:
Who Are the Vicious Ones?.......2006-04-04
It doesn't take one long to realize the title, I believe, doesn't refer to the viciousness of the wolves, but to humans. In a number of instances he reveals the incredible senseless cruelty inflicted upon captured wolves, many times for sheer pleasure and other times to somehow to 'even the score'.
Particularly interesting are the passages on the Mormons and their eradication of the wolves of Utah, which I think backfired in an interesting way, the very tall tales associated with wolves, the turning point toward environmentalism brought about Leopold, and the governmental eradication program in effect until 1950. It's quite interesting to see how the government "propaganda program" drove the eradication effort.
The author makes an interesting remark that there is no record in North America that wolves have ever killed a human. It's probably true, but worth looking into. I've heard this remark before. Perhaps a little Google work, or maybe something is in his bibliography.
There was an interesting section on communications between the Algonquin indians and Europeans settlers that hinged on interaction with wolves, dogs, and other animals. I recently had seen the movie "New World", 2005/6 release, which depicted this communication in a similar way. Perhaps the author had some influence.
Vicious, but Not Killers of People........2005-06-09
As a young girl, I was warned that lecherous old men were "wolves on the prowl." After all, children read about Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf with big teeth. These are only imaginary wolves not the real 'vicious' wild animals.
When the Europeans came to America, there was a goodly population of these creatures, hungry and ferocious as a tiger in a zoo. Wolf legends preceded them and they were forced to migrate to the West because of rampant eradication in the North East. Steeped in myth and symbols, they existed in folklore long before history connected them to humans.
Wolves were territorial and their haunting howls were not as predators but communication 'songs' warning rival groups in search of food to look elsewhere. Wolves had their own reasons for 'singing' -- to prevent the forced eliminaton of each other.
Like the Indians and buffalo, they were forced off their native lands to the wild West to the point of extinction. Exterminated in the rangelands and farming regions of the U. S., the species survived in the upper regions of Alaska and Canada, along the Great Lakes in the East.
Humans are vicious at the core, generating pain and suffering on each other and cause extreme violence to feel "big." People transported their hatred in stories and traditions,not their souls. Humans tortured animals and showed all kinds of nasty behavior. Euro-Americans killed wild animals and transformed habitats. They espoused a climate of public opinion that mixes love, hate, and indifference with savage behavior. Like the buffalo, they became an endangered species, yet they have survived. Some of the Canadian wolves have been transplanted to Yellowstone National Park in Montana.
In the Smoky Mountains, we have the vicious black bears, as dangerous as any wolf who will actually kill humans who find themselves on the wrong hiking trail. Will the uneducated hillfolk of this area decide to exterminate the bear population? People in this large town at the base of the Smokies will spend all day at Cades Cove just to see a real deer. In Middle Tennessee, we have Davy Crockett Park full of deer to enjoy.
But, no one can trust a wolf unless, of course, he is a caged animal in the zoo. Humans are so insecure and must use guns not for protection but to feed their egoes. The painting on the cover shows a group of Puritans huddling together as the big, bad wolf growls, the old woman with a red cloak and the man not aiming his rifle (just pointing at the dangerous predator), reflects how uninformed our ancestors really were and how naive. He looks just like a wolf-hound.
Jon T. Colemen traveled the country, from New England to Utah, stopping in Denver along the way, for his research; this well-researched book began as a doctoral thesis at Yale University. He teaches history at the University of Notre Dame, and helps take care of his children (along with the laundry) as does my son, the astronomer.
Average customer rating:
- Slapstick Adventure
- Never Cry Wolf
- A Must Read for Wolf Lovers
- Never Cry Wolf
- Should be read by every person alive.
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Never Cry Wolf
Farley Mowat
Manufacturer: Bantam
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The Snow Walker
ASIN: 0553273965
Release Date: 1983-10-01 |
Book Description
Hordes of bloodthirsty wolves are slaughtering the arctic caribou, and the government's Wildlife Service assigns naturalist Farely Mowat to investigate. Mowat is dropped alone onto the frozen tundra, where he begins his mission to live among the howling wolf packs and study their waves. Contact with his quarry comes quickly, and Mowat discovers not a den of marauding killers but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. As Mowat comes closer to the wolf world, he comes to fear with them on onslaught of bounty hunters and government exterminators out to erase the noble wolf community from the Arctic. Never Cry Wolf is one of the brilliant narratives on the myth and magical world of wild wolves and man's true place among the creatures of nature. "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be -- the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer -- which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself." -- from the new preface to Never Cry Wolf.
Customer Reviews:
Slapstick Adventure.......2007-09-18
This classic defense of wolves never strays into preaching; it makes its points through slapstick adventure. A hapless young biologist named Farley Mowat gets shipped off into the bush by the Canadian government and instructed to conduct meticulous observations of wolves. He is to disembowel a lot of wolves and prove that the ravening beasts are decimating the caribou. Instead, the wolves disprove his assumptions at every turn. He becomes an ardent fan of their family life, sense of humor, restraint, and good nature. He decides to skip the disemboweling. An Eskimo named Ootek helps to illuminate wolf nature and plays the wise straight red man to Mowat's buffoon. Mowat hides under his canoe from wolves that turn out to be huskies; he ogles a she-wolf he has christened Angeline. Some of his antics could come right out of a Chaplin movie. Perhaps Chaplin should have done a movie in the far north not about Gold Rush prospectors who eat shoes, but about wildlife biologists who eat creamed mice to test their nutritional value. In one scene, Mowat jumps up naked from sunbathing to run off after a pack of wolves in hopes of observing a caribou hunt. When the wolves ignore the caribou, Mowat runs at the pack, swearing, in frustration. An Eskimo lad tells his mother, who never speaks to the mad white nudist again.
This nature writing does not sing. It is not meant to. When Mowat mentions the tundra plains around him, he calls them dreary. Nor does he praise the wolves' appearance much. What's more, enough experts have questioned the veracity of his observations that Barry Lopez labels Never Cry Wolf a "fictionalized account" in his book Of Wolves and Men. Yet Lopez still recommends Never Cry Wolf as an introduction to the species. The truth is that the book doesn't need beauty or literal truth to draw us closer to nature. Through Mowat's stories, we come to share his affinity for wolves, and we understand the hunger for connection that propels his scientific curiosity.
Never Cry Wolf .......2007-09-09
Very interesting read about the study of wolves. Farley is also a very amuzing writer which makes the subject matter easier to read. If you are a Wildlife lover, this is a must read.
A Must Read for Wolf Lovers.......2007-04-13
I am blessed to be the "Mom" of 2 wolf mix rescues and am a volunteer at a wolf preserve. This book accurately describes his experiences with wolves in a humorous yet realistic way. The author honestly describes the problems with the human factor in the wolf world through his adventures as a biologist working for the government of Canada.
Never Cry Wolf.......2007-01-20
I did not see the condition of the book as it was a gift for my nephew. I have read several of Farley's books and loved them. I have not read this one his most recognized title as I wantd to read those I had never heard about or saw the movie. I can only trust that it is great, as are his other books that were not made into movies.
Should be read by every person alive........2007-01-11
This book is breathtaking in its scope and majesty... Or perhaps that is just the wolves the author is describing. Whoever has any doubts at all about the wolves should be blown away by this gripping and revealing book.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT mistake this book for fiction. It is nonfiction, and though many bookstores and libraries mistake it for fiction, it is pure, cold, truth.
Read it. Period.
Book Description
Although countless books have been written about the U-boat war in the Atlantic, precious few facts have come to light about the men who served in the submarines that wrought such havoc on Allied ships. Eager to get beyond the stereotypes perpetuated in movies and novels and find out who these elusive sailors really were, archivist Timothy Mulligan started searching official records. Eventually he went straight to the source, conducting a survey of more than a thousand U-boat officers and enlisted men and interviewing a number of them personally. The result is this character study of the German submarine force that challenges traditional and revisionist views of the service.
Mulligan found striking similarities in the men's geographic and social origins, education, and previous occupations, particularly within the specialized engineering and radio branches of the submarine force. The information he gathered establishes quantifiable patterns in age, length of service, and experience, as well as the organization's overall recruitment policies and training standards. The numbers and losses of U-boat personnel are also fully examined.
Beyond these objective characteristics, this study lists such subjective factors as morale, treatment of enemy ship survivors, and the relationship of the submariners to the Nazi regime, and it confirms a serious crisis in morale in late 1943. The roles played by the head of the U-boat arm, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, and its organizational chief, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, are thoroughly addressed. Mulligan concludes that the U-boat arm quickly evolved from a handpicked elite to a more representative sample of the German navy at large but continued to be treated as an elite force. The only comprehensive investigation yet published, this book also draws on POW interrogations of U-boat survivors and documentation of Kriegsmarine personnel policy obtained from German archives.
Customer Reviews:
Can the Question Posed Be Answered?.......2003-03-20
First of all, anyone interested in submarine warfare will find this a well-documented and constructed account of the development and use of submarines within the Kriegsmarine (KM) by the Germans during World War II. Like most books from the Naval Institute Press, among them the highly-sought first edition of Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October", one would be hard put to find flaws in the presentation.
The author does opine from the gathered data, much of it in the National Archives, that helps the reader track from year to year the rise and fall of the effectiveness of U-Boot (U-Boat) warfare, the reasons (especially increasingly effective Allied detection and bombing) for the end of the Battle of the Atlantic, and the failure of the unleashing of "total war" by Admiral Donitz. The book is rich with German terminology, which will facilitate reader understanding of other books, and films such as "Das Boot". For example, the term L.I. (pronounced el-ee in German) occurs frequently in that film, referring to the Chief Engineer (Lieutenant Engineer, on the Engineer track within the KM).
I find somewhat astounding one conclusion of the author, that most U-Boot sailors were German patriots and relatively unaware of the genocide occurring within the Reich. Although there is dictum that der Fuehrer compained of having a "Christian Navy", frequent trips back to the Fatherland when on leave, trips to Berlin for decorations, and so forth would seem to make it incredulous that these men did not know what was happening within the Reich. The author does not identify how many sailors in the U-Boot Waffe were NSDAP (Nazi Party) members, which would be a telling statistic. He states that Germans at home were more concerned with obtaining food during the Allied bombing campaign, which has come under some revisionist criticism ("German's Revisit War's Agony, Ending a Taboo", Richard Bernstein, New York Times, Vol. CLII, No. 52423, March 15, 2003, p. A3). However, this reviewer has studied the period 1918-1950 fairly extensively, and viewed in German newsreels shown in German theatres as early as 1940 which demonstrated the persecution of Jews and other "undesireables" and the unfolding of the plans stated in the book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), available in English in 1939.
Films such as "Das Boot" and "Stalingrad" do go a long way toward viewing the common soldier or sailor as somewhat of a victim of birth and citizenship. Standards both mental and physical for U-Boat personnel were astoundingly stringent (even volunteers with dental caries were rejected). These men fought in unimaginably deplorable conditions (no heat, one commode for a crew averaging 50, frequent exposure to the exhaust of diesel engines). However, this book doesn't convey that kind of feeling, compared to, say, Werner's "Iron Coffins" (the recollections of a U-Boat commander). Nonetheless, its statistical analysis is important--suggesting that upwards of 50,000 rather than the commonly accepted 40,000 sailors may have served on U-Boats. The casualty rate (75% or so killed) belies grand fealty to a doomed and errant cause, but as with our own Confederates, we can nonetheless appreciate the valor and sacrifice with which they served "their" country.
Very good behind-the-scenes look.......2000-09-28
A very informative, in-depth look behind the scenes at the men who made up Germany's U-Boat arm. Mulligan has done his homework in researching educational backgrounds, regions where these men came from, training time, ages when they became captains, and a whole array of facts and figures put together in a way that is not boring, but rather enlightening.
Party affiliations are also discussed in great detail. Some commanders were fanatical Nazis, others started out that way only to change when they saw what it was doing to their homeland, and others were just there doing their job.
Admiral Donitz is also thoroughly discussed in this book, looking at his ideaologies at conducting the war, his strategies and his loyalties to his men and to Hitler. It makes me want to buy his book, "Memoirs" and read further.
A well-done, in-depth book. A lot of facts and figures put together in a nice package.
The Men Behind the Machines.......2000-04-04
This thoroughly engrossing book by Timothy Mulligan is the first work to portray the officers and men of Germany's U-Boat arm in an attempt to understand not only why they fought, but what motivated them to continue to take their vessels to sea after 1943, when the loss rate in combat grew to an incredible level and each new mission grew increasingly suicidal. Mulligan's book goes far beyond a statistical tabulation of data, and the many nuggets of information he gleaned from his in-depth research refute most of the myths and legends of the U-Boat men popularized in the immediate post-war years in books and movies. The book overturns the common images of Germany's U-Boat men as being either fanatical killers or baby-faced sacrifices to Hitlerian ambitions. This is not a chronological history of the war at sea in WW2, although the author does describe in detail the major trends of the Battle of the Atlantic, the struggle for technological superiority, and the effects these had on recruiting, morale, combat performance, and motivation of the German submarine crews. All in all, this is an excellent book that puts a human face on a much-feared enemy, cuts through the stereotypes and propaganda images, and shows that the UBootfahrer were truly "neither sharks nor wolves"...nor sheep.
Average customer rating:
- One great story, one great poem, then a drop-off
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Tenderness of the Wolves
Dennis Cooper
Manufacturer: Crossing Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0895940655 |
Customer Reviews:
One great story, one great poem, then a drop-off.......1998-08-07
Dennis Cooper, before turning to novels, wrote several books of poetry and short-short stories. The good news about The Tenderness of the Wolves is its super final story, a longer piece called "A Herd", where Cooper begins to explore dark areas, including mutilation, rape, and sadism, which he later returns to in his novels. "A Herd" is haunting and brutal, verging on shocking on a first read. His exploration of these difficult topics is strong, yet subtle. Also included in this book is "Being Aware," among the best of all Cooper's poetry. Unfortunately, beyond that, the poems are a marked dropoff, distinctly less interesting than in Cooper's earlier book, Idols. He covers the territory of bored, sexually peaked teenagers better than anyone, but these poems don't show more than flashes of true insight. In addition, if anyone wants to read a truly overblown analyzation of Cooper's work, check out the introduction to this book, written by! noted novelist and essayist Edmund White.
Average customer rating:
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Big Bad Wolves
Joan Mellen
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Contemporary
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ASIN: 0394498003
Release Date: 1978-01-12 |
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