The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places is an anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 of works by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

. It was published on September 12, 1973 and includes essays from Local Color

Local Color (book)

Local Color is the third published book by the American author Truman Capote, released in the Fall of 1950. Local Color includes notes and sketches about persons and places, including travel journal-style essays on cities and countries Capote had lived in or visited.Local Color was published while...

and Observations

Observations (book)

Observations is a collaborative coffee table book with photography by Richard Avedon, commentary by Truman Capote and design by Alexey Brodovitch. It features a slipcase with color, all-capitalized lettering; the book itself is further housed in a clear acetate/glassine slip cover and is printed...

, as well as the The Muses Are Heard

The Muses Are Heard

The Muses Are Heard is an early journalistic work of Truman Capote. Originally published in The New Yorker, it is a narrative account of the cultural mission by The Everyman's Opera to the U.S.S.R. in the mid-1950s....

.

Conception

The work is largely retrospective look at Truman Capote's life spanning the time frame from 1942 to 1972. The title, inspired by the author André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

 is taken from an Arab proverb: "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Reception and critical analysis

Lis Harris when writing for the New Yorker said: "Capote describes these pieces as "silhouettes and souvenirs" and "a written geography of my life"--a somewhat diaphanous description, but, like most of Capote's nonfiction writing, completely apt. The title is taken from an Arab proverb: "The dogs bark but the caravan moves on" (Gide to Capote one day in Tangiers when Capote was grumbling about a bad review), and most of the pieces are about people and places Capote has observed while moving on since 1942. Though large and covering a long period of time, this book is innocent of political or social opinions of any sort; if Capote has any, he has always kept them out of his writing; and there is a certain shallowness to the collection because of it. It bulges, however, with sharp, subtle observations of people, fascinating reminiscences and travel jottings, wonderful sketches, anecdotes and yarns, and, among other things, the most frightening horror story you've ever heard. Not a deep plate of soup, perhaps, but a marvelously tasty one."

External links

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