My Dog Tulip (1956)The self-confessing aspect of Ackerley’s dual portrait leads him at one point to a rather poignant admission: frustrated with his prospects of reaching sex through love, after graduating from Cambridge, he “started upon a long quest in pursuit of love through sex.” Ackerley’s years of cruising compliant guardsmen and other subsidized companions grew out of his search for the “Ideal Friend” and ended only with the acquisition of Queenie, at which point Ackerley’s relentless sexual urges apparently subsided.The Brits, amongst their other peculiarities, have a literary tradition of authors recounting their tortured psycho-sexual relationships with animals: TH White’s Goshawk; Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water; and Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk. As the review quoted above delineates, Ackerley’s dog, Tulip, assumed the place he had reserved for his imagined “Ideal Friend.” Little surprise then that the dog ends up being indulged to the point where even vets can barely tolerate treating it and friends stop inviting them places. Meanwhile, Ackerley writes obsessively about the dog’s scatology and sexuality. The book understandably divides opinion and I fear, despite the manifest quality of the writing, thar I must count myself among those who rather disliked it. (Reviewed:) Grade: (C-) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: J. R. Ackerley -ENTRY: J R Ackerley (London Remembers) -ENTRY: J.R. Ackerley British writer and editor (Encyclopaedia Britannica) -ENTRY: Ackerley, J. R. (1896-1967) (GLBTQ) -PORTRAIT: J. R. Ackerley (National Portrait Gallery) -COLLECTIONS: Ackerley, Joseph Randolph, 1896 - 1967 (writer and literary editor) (Cambridge) -AUTHOR PAGE: J. R. Ackerley (Penguin Random House) -BOOK SITE: My Dog Tulip (NYRB Books) -EXCERPT: Joe Ackerley’s ‘Family Values’ (Matt Cook, January 2014, Queer Domesticities) -ARCHIVES: Ackerley (The Spectator) -ARCHIVES: subject:"Ackerley, J. R. (Joe Randolph), 1896-1967" (Internet Archive) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip & My Father & Myself by J. R. Ackerley (David Yezzi, New Criterion) The self-confessing aspect of Ackerley’s dual portrait leads him at one point to a rather poignant admission: frustrated with his prospects of reaching sex through love, after graduating from Cambridge, he “started upon a long quest in pursuit of love through sex.” Ackerley’s years of cruising compliant guardsmen and other subsidized companions grew out of his search for the “Ideal Friend” and ended only with the acquisition of Queenie, at which point Ackerley’s relentless sexual urges apparently subsided. -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip by JR Ackerley (Elizabeth Haws, NY Times Book Review) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip (Asylum) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip (Caponomics) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip (John Peyton Cooke, Medium) -REVIEW: of My Dog Tulip (Dean Flower, The Hudson Review) -REVIEW: of My Father and Myself by J.R. Ackerley (W. H. Auden, NY Review of Books) -REVIEW: of My Father and Myself (Literary Fictions) -REVIEW: of My Father and Myself (Neville Braybrooke, The Spectator) -REVIEW: of My Father and myself (Helena Gurfinkel, Biography) -REVIEW: of Hindoo Holiday by JR Ackerley (Evelyn Waugh, The Spectator) -REVIEW: of We Think the World of You by JR Ackerley (Asylum) -REVIEW: of We Think the World of You (Publishers Weekly) -REVIEW: of We Think the World of You (Public Books) FILM: -FILMOGRAPHY: J.R. Ackerley(1896-1967) (IMDB) -FILOGRAPHY: My Dog Tulip (2009) (IMDB)My Dog Tuli -WIKIPEDIA: My Dog Tulip -FILMOGRAPHY: My Dog Tulip (Rotten Tomatoes) -FILM: My Dog Tulip - MP4 version (2009) -REVIEW INDEX: My Dog Tulip (Metacritic) -FILM REVIEW: My Dog Tulip (Roger Ebert) -FILM REVIEW: My Dog Tulip (Philip French, The Guardian) Book-related and General Links: |
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