Why Dogs Chase Cars: Tales Of A Beleaguered Boyhood - Softcover

Singleton, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565124049 ISBN 13: 9781565124042

Verlag: Algonquin Books, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Growing up in the tiny rural town of Forty-Five, South Carolina, Mendal Dawes wants nothing more than to escape his backwater hometown and his crazy father, who buries stuff in their backyard, calls Mendal "Fuzznuts," makes him recite Marx and Durkheim, and forces him to take terrible unpaid jobs--from helping out in nursing homes to tutoring. By the author of These People Are Us.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

George Singleton teaches writing at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities.

Aus dem Klappentext

These fourteen funny stories tell the tale of a beleaguered boyhood down home where the dogs still run loose. As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is out.

It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal "Fuzznuts" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice.

Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind just like those car-chasing dogs.

But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose "gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry."

To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Algonquin Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1565124049
• ISBN 13: 9781565124042
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 300
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: EDITIONS GALLIMARD; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italien