Doghouse Roses - Softcover

EARLE, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0436276054 ISBN 13: 9780436276057

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001

Synopsis

Steve Earle has taken his considerable narrative talents -- already evidenced in a songwriting career spanning three decades -- and applied them to the page in DOGHOUSE ROSES, his first story collection. With all the grace, poetry, and passion that has made his music honored around the world, Earle offers eleven stories in this remarkable literary debut. He chronicles the lives of the lost and the lonely -- rebels, addicts, outlaws, and drifters -- with a voice that is "vigorous, punchy, often profane and more often profound" (The Oregonian).

About this title

Review

Fans of Steve Earle's music will recognize many familiar themes in his first collection of short stories, Doghouse Roses. Here are tales of drug addiction, the nightmare of Vietnam, and the price of failure (or success) in the music industry. Not surprisingly, the latter topic elicits some of Earle's best work: in "Billy the Kid," for example, he traces the meteoric rise of Nashville's last authentic country-music prodigy, whose early fame was abruptly terminated by a car accident. And in "Doghouse Roses," Bobby Charles's career nose-dives as he grapples with heroin, speedballs, and crack: "He suspended all pretence of taking care of himself, going for days without showering and living on a steady diet of ice cream and Dr. Pepper. He left the house only to cop, driving straight home and sitting in the tiny half bath in the hallway for hours with his pipe." Yet the protagonist, like his creator, finally regains a grip on sobriety, along with a revived career.

Earle misses the mark in "Taneytown," a first-person narrative told through the eyes of a mentally retarded black child. And his focus on the harsh (and very masculine) world of junkies, country music, and execution chambers can grow a little thin. Still, Doghouse Roses offers up an ample dose of optimism. After all, in a world where cold-blooded murderers let innocent men take the rap, and junkies watch their dealers die, the gods of forgiveness can still be summoned with a single rose sold at a convenience store--the age-old remedy for men in the proverbial doghouse. --Gregory Bensinger

About the Author

STEVE EARLE is a singer-songwriter, actor, activist, and the author of a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, the story collection Doghouse Roses. He has released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums, including the Grammy winners The Revolution Starts Now, Washington Square Serenade, and Townes. He has appeared on film and television, with celebrated roles in The Wire and Treme. His album entitled I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive was produced by T Bone Burnett. He often tours with his wife, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0436276054
• ISBN 13: 9780436276057
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 207