Katz concludes the canine love story he began in A Dog Year (2002).
Border collie Devon was a misfit from the moment he arrived at the Katz household in New Jersey. He tried to herd garbage trucks, snowplows, buses, kids on skateboards. After months of attempting to discipline the high-strung pup, Katz took him to train with Carolyn, an animal behaviorist and sheepherder. She observed that to Devon, the world made no sense. She also noted the pup was terrified of his own name; thus, Devon became “Orson.” Realizing that the dog would never adapt to suburban New Jersey, Katz pulled up stakes and relocated to a farm in upstate New York. There, Orson found a measure of tranquility alongside Rose, a disciplined border collie; Clementine, a sweet Lab puppy; and Winston, a rooster with “Patton-like authority.” While Rose herded sheep, Orson made Katz his work. The dog sat quietly while his owner wrote, and the two took moonlit walks to observe Sirius, the dog star. On an all-terrain vehicle, they daily patrolled the farm—and, illegally, the surrounding town. While he wasn’t perfect, he was Katz’s once-in-a-lifetime dog. “Orson helped me, deep into my sixth decade, to stay open, to not shut down,” he writes. But suddenly the dog began to nip visitors and, worse, bite them. As his violence escalated, the once-skeptical Katz embraced every available treatment: traditional veterinary medicine, New Age acupuncturists, even an animal shaman. Orson became more aggressive, and Katz faced a terrible decision: Is it morally right to keep a dog that poses a danger to others?
A heartbreaking memoir of love, friendship and responsibility.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6189-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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