Product Description

For thirty years, Frank Conroy's commentaries on life, music, and writing have appeared regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and GQ. DOGS BARK, BUT THE CARAVAN ROLLS ON collects these pieces into an autobiography in journalistic snapshots. They evoke Conroy's southern childhood, his teen years in New York as a truant hanging out at pool halls and Harlem jazz clubs, his first glimmers of the power of language and the writing life in college, his romantic life, and his experiences as a teacher and as director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Here, too, are profiles of the musicians he has come to know -- and jammed with: Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis, Peter Serkin, even the Rolling Stones. New essays fill out the collection from Conroy's wry retrospective viewpoint. DOGS BARK, BUT THE CARAVAN ROLLS ON is imbued with the honesty, humor, and insight that made his memoir STOP-TIME a classic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #386568 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Amazon.com Review
Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now, Frank Conroy's first nonfiction work since his acclaimed memoir Stop-Time, contains thoughtful pieces on jazz, writing, his father, and fathering. In addition to directing the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Conroy is a jazz pianist of some skill, as he proudly notes in this collection, taken primarily from articles published in Esquire and GQ. Profiles of Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis, and the Rolling Stones are complemented by pieces about Conroy's own musical background, including a wonderful story of the Harlem club where Conroy became a regular, and of playing piano at a club without his bass player, who was late, only to have Charles Mingus arise from dinner and sit in.

On writing, there are some useful pieces regarding the process itself, particularly in "The Writers' Workshop." Conroy is direct and engaging, and he humbly discusses his childhood truancy, his flawed writings, and his family life. While some writers mythologize or sepia-coat their lives, Conroy tells it like it is, or was, but with careful thought and personal meaning to which readers can relate. As Conroy humbly jams with Marsalis, he confesses: "I feel like a child who has the skills to ride a pony but has been mistakenly mounted on Man o' War." After his first experience with Mingus, the great bassist said, "'You are ... an authentic primitive. That is true.' He leaned forward and lowered his voice. 'But you swing.'" Conroy's writings swing, too, and Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On has something for everyone, especially writers and jazz enthusiasts. --Michael Ferch

From Publishers Weekly
Conroy (Body & Soul) delivers a running commentary on life in this collection of articles and essays, at once subtle and dazzling, written over the past 25 years. His observations range from warmly intimate (ruminations on sex and love, shooting pool as a kid) to anonymously civic (the meaning and vitality of smalltown America). In the first half of the book, he grapples with the memory of his remote father, embraces fatherhood himself and peruses the mysteries of life especially those he finds in reading ("escape") and writing ("experiment"), and even riffs on his position as chair of the famed Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. The second half leads readers into a foray of pieces Conroy has written on his second and well-known love, jazz. He trips into jam sessions with the Rolling Stones, waxes on his evolution as a pianist and profiles the great provocateurs in jazz. His exploration of Wynton Marsalis at 23 and later at 34 minutely reflects the arc of developments in the author's own life. Curiously, key moments in the essays resurface within each other as if in coda; the overlapping details makes reading them even more enjoyable.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The director of the famous Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, Conroy has contributed to such publications as Esquire, Harper's magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, as well as to books on writing, for many years. His miscellaneous essays are now collected in this interesting and well-done anthology. Conroy takes on such topics as learning to play pool, fatherhood, the value of now-disappearing small towns in instilling family values, the enthusiasms of jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, and, of course, the Writers' Workshop. Conroy is a jazz pianist as well as a teacher and writer, so it is natural that a number of essays deal with music and musicians. Previous works by this author include a well-received memoir, Stop-Time, and the novel Body & Soul, whose reception was more mixed. Academic and public collections, particularly those strong in modern American literature or music, will want to consider this title. Nancy P. Shires, East Carolina Univ. Lib., Greenville, NC
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Simple Pleasure of a Good Read
With the recent death of Frank Conroy, I remembered that I had purchased this book about a year ago after hearing him interviewed on NPR. My primary motivation in purchasing the book was to have a copy of the essay on his father that he read over the air. I've ended up with a lot more. I'm the type of person who thinks compulsively about good writing, what makes it, how I can move my own correspondence, office work, and creative writing toward something more beautiful, more pleasurable. I guess anyone with the most cursory knowledge of Conroy's life would be justifiably surprised if his writing turned out to be less than excellent. That's a given. But that he can write so well about nearly anything and take you along as a friend, a companion, speaking/writing so openly, so honestly, about life "things." If you have a best friend from high school or college, who has been there for the last twenty or thirty years, good times, bad times, and the vast expanses in between, think of the kinds of conversations that you have when it's just you two. That's how Conroy writes.

A revelation.
Yes, this book was a revelation to me. I am a writer wannabe, a pretender to the mantel of nonfiction writing. While I was searching blindly through the literature to find myself, my voice, perhaps an inspiration, I heard Frank Conroy interviewed on Michael Feldman's radio program on NPR. Conroy was talking about this very book. I was intrigued, I was interested. I went out, I bought the book. I read, and I learned, in the most pleasurable way possible. I was in the hands of a good writer, one that is able to carry me through his narrative and make his point with clarity and humor.

I learned about jazz, about music in general. I learned about the Iowas Writers Workshop, what they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it. It was, alas, a short book, but it made me a more knowledgable person. It made me appreciate life. It made me excited about things I never thought I would be interested in, and I am excited about writing. What more can you ask for from a book?