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Product Description
Steve Earle does everything he does with intelligence, creativity, passion, and integrity. In music, these strengths have earned him comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, the ardent devotion of his fans, and the admiration of the media. And Earle does a lot: he is singer, songwriter, producer, social activist, teacher. . . . He’s not only someone who makes great music; he’s someone to believe in. With the publication of his first collection of short stories, DOGHOUSE ROSES, he gives us yet another reason to believe.
Earle’s stories reflect the many facets of the man and the hard-fought struggles, the defeats, and the eventual triumphs he has experienced during a career spanning three decades. In the title story he offers us a gut-wrenchingly honest portrait of a nearly famous singer whose life and soul have been all but devoured by drugs. Billy the Kid” is a fable about everything that will never happen in Nashville, and Wheeler County” tells a romantic, sweet-tempered tale about a hitchhiker stranded for years in a small Texas town. A story about the husband of a murder victim witnessing an execution addresses a subject Earle has passionately taken on as a social activist, and a cycle of stories features the American,” a shady international wanderer, Vietnam vet, and sometime drug smuggler a character who can be seen as Earle’s alter ego, the person he might have become if he had been drafted.
Earle is a songwriter’s songwriter, and here he takes his writing gift into another medium, along with all the grace, poetry, and deep feeling that has made his music honored around the world.
Amazon.com 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
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