The Dog, The Family: A Household Tale

Most people have parents. In fact, everybody has parents. However, when your parents don't take any interest in you, they tend to become not so much parents, as people you have to live with. This was the case for August Kleinzahler, whose recent memoire "Cutty, One Rock", was very well received by critics nationwide. Kleinzahler, born in New Jersey in 1949, was raised in a family that was far less than caring. His parents openly told him he was a mistake, and chose not to have any part in his early upbringing, leaving him in the responsibility of the family dog and their Czech housekeeper. After firing Christine, the housekeeper, his did mother decided to take some part in the rearing of her youngest child, but probably only because her husband would have nothing to do with raising children. The first thing Kleinzahler's mother did: try to get rid of her son's thick Czech accent, a result of being completely ignored by his parents and taken in, in his own home, by Christine.
The dog, Granny, however, played an even larger role in Kleinzahler's early years than the housekeeper. Granny was his only playmate, his only friend. His brother and sister were never there for him. His sister was constantly studying Latin behind her locked bedroom door, while his brother was either found in the basement, putting together model airplanes, or outside in an apple tree, but certainly not with Augustus. Everyone seemed to ignore Augustus Kleinzahler in his childhood. If they weren't ignoring him, they were making fun of him. His great aunt called him "dog-boy", his mother never let him forget his accent, teasing him about it years later by immitating him. His father, meanwhile, completely ignored his children. All in all, Kleinzahler's does not seem like a good, or even a normal childhood.
The mood for the entire piece is, I believe set up by the first sentence, "It was the dog who raised me". That does not bode well for the cheeriness factor throughout the rest of the book, and the second sentence does nothing to lighten the tone, "Oh, the others came and went with their nurturing gestures and concerns, but it was the dog on whose ear I teethed and who watched over me with the sagacity and bearing of a Ugandan tribal chief". I did thouroughly enjoy the first chapter though.