Product Description

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. Groucho Marx Outside of a Dog is the captivating account of twenty-five books drawn from the fields of literature, psychology and philosophy, and a memoir of a reading self. Tracing the formative role books have played in his life, Rick Gekoski trains the same ironic and analytic eye on these books and their authors as he does on himself. The result is unique: a sustained, witty book dedicated to the proposition that we are what we read. Outside of A Dog might be described as an intellectual bibliomemoir, except that the author regards the noun ‘intellectual’ as a term of abuse. Gekoski’s twenty-five include: Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg; Magnus Hirschfeld Sexual Anomalies and Perversions; Allen Ginsberg, Howl; J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Descartes, Meditations; David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding; W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems; F.R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit; Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; R.D. Laing, The Divided Self; Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; A.S. Neill, Summerhill; Roald Dahl, Matilda; Alice Miller, Pictures of a Childhood; A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic; Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy; Peter Wright, Spycatcher; and Rick Gekoski, Staying Up.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6709 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 302 pages

Review
A charming memoir ... real intelligence and true feeling and sense of humour. That makes him [Rick] a great companion, and I would be happy, on a long train journey, to sit in between Rick and Matilda, the one very big, the other very small, but made of the same stuff. --Jeanette Winterson, The Times

A wonderful account of a life immersed in books … which reads like a performance from a seasoned raconteur: extremely funny and seamlessly structured. --Independent on Sunday

This is an intelligent, consciously disarming book, packed with ideas, jokes, good stories, small triumphs and larger regrets. --Sunday Telegraph

Gekoski is as witty and entertaining as he is well-read. --London Review of Books

This is an intelligent, consciously disarming book, packed with ideas, jokes, good stories, small triumphs and larger regrets. --Sunday Telegraph

Great fun. --Penelope Lively, Daily Telegraph

This is an intelligent, consciously disarming book, packed with ideas, jokes, good stories, small triumphs and larger regrets. --Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Rick Gekoski is an internationally respected bookman, with experience as an academic, rare book dealer, bibliographer, critic, publisher, broadcaster, writer, and Booker Prize judge. He lives in London and spends time each year in Paris and New Zealand.

Customer Reviews

Was it worth it?
Printed on the dust jacket of this book is an endorsement from Tatler which reads 'Think Bill Bryson, only on Boooks'. This, and its source, are a pretty good summing up of the contents: if you are the kind of person who likes Tatler, you'll probably like this; if you're the kind of person who loves Bill Bryson, you'll love it.

This is the life-in-books of Rick Gekoski, ex-professor of literature, and dealer in rare books and manuscripts, man-about-town and compulsive name-dropper - a person admirably in tune with the Zeitgeist.

Rick's reading life starts with Dr.Seuss, moves through the Hardy Boys, and after an early deviation into the exciting world of psycho-sexual manuals, moves onwards and upwards to J.D.Salinger, Ken Kesey and D.H.Lawrence.

Exhausted with an intellect sorely tested by Descartes, Hume and 'Freddy' Ayer, Rick undergoes a premature epiphany, discovering Roald Dahl among his childrens' presents and avoiding the longeurs of a family christmas by reading it all afternoon while locked in the loo, much to the annoyance of his wife and the slightly lesser annoyance of his children: they want to read the book themselves - or that's what they say, but clever Rick can see that this is the wife's ploy to get him stuck into the washing up, and he keeps the closet door well-locked.

Finally he gets stuck into Carl Hiaasen, and is amazed to find that he's unconsciously struck gold with a book that has made it on to Colum Toibin's list of 200 Best Books since the War!

'Outside of a Dog' is amusingly exhibitionist - Rick finds himself quite fascinating, owns an Epstein bust of T.S.Eliot to which he waves good-bye every night on leaving the Office, and has known everyone from Grahame Green to Salman Rushdie, and from John Bayley to Germaine Greer.

Less amusing for the reader (and presumably for them) is Rick's exhibition of his family as well. One can hardly think that Rick's ex-wife Barbara will be indifferent to his portrayal of her pyschiatric difficulties and pretensions to psychotherapy, or that his daughter, Anna, whom he presents as a would-be Clarice Starling, will be unembarrassed at being put on public display as a serial-killer wannabe groupie.

Still, there's no denying that the book has chutzpah - the comparison with Bill Bryson is by no means misleading - but it's bubblegum, really.

It should do very well.

A life in books
Rick is not the first person to write his life story in the context of the books he's read, but this one is as good as any and was a read both amusing and informative. It contained a good enough mix of the familiar and the new to keep my interest throughout its 300 pages. Rick is basically an academic (ex-lecturer in English at Warwick University) turned rare book dealer, and has so many contacts in the world of literature. And oh yes, he's been a judge on the Man Booker Prize. So, as far as literature is concerned I guess he's qualified to write about books, which he does eruditely, knowledgeably and perhaps above all, humorously.

Rick's book is not just about books of course, but also about himself, and I have to say, his life has been interesting. He writes about his childhood in a way which explains his love of reading, and like so many avid readers, their literary imagaination seems to have come alive through gaining access to an adult library at an early age. I remember at age 14 being able to graduate from the junior public library to the adult library, and finding riches there beyond belief. My own interest seems to have been in humour whereas Rick Gekoski seems to have got his rocks off by exploring his parents' extensive library of psycho-sexual literature, whether Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing, or Sexual Anomalies and Perversions by Magunus Hirschfield.

Thankfully this stage seems not to have lasted too long and in no time Rick was deep in Holden Caulfield's life in Catcher in The Rye. And then Rick read T S Eliot, The Waste Land and his reading perceptions were changed forever. Isn't the pleasure of reading a book like Outside of a Dog so much to do with discovering shared experiences, that sense of inwardly saying, Ah yes, when the writer enthuses about one's own literary loves?

Rick progresses through some fairly esoteric stuff on his journey to Silence of the Lambs (and yes, I agree, even Robert Harris deserves a place in the canon because of his creation of Hannibal Lecter, a character so real he must jump off any page that contains a mention of him). But to reach Lecter we progress through R D Laing, Germaine Greer (this is a very 60s list at this point), and even touches on Hume, Descartes and A J Eyer.

I was quite pleased to see Carl Hiassen in Rick's list, for we must all have some lighter reads to keep us going and it was also fascinating to read Rick's encounters with the Cambridge spies - Kim Philby etc. Rick actually travelled to Moscow to meet Mrs Philby.

This really is a very interesting book which must keep any avid reader interested throughout its pages. I reached the end and could have done with more, and what greater tribute to a book is there than that? Its a great book to dip into, and also one to read from cover to cover in a couple of days. I am sure it will remain on my shelves as a regular reference point and I'm pleased I bought it.

Rare and desirable
Following on from the writer's splendidly entertaining "Tolkien's Gown", this is a further foray into the specialised world of rare and notable books and even rarer and more notable authors, although - regrettably for this reviewer at least - with fewer anecdotes of Gekoski's bookselling exploits. This engaging account tells of the books that have affected the writer's life - in varying ways and for a variety of reasons - and how they have made him what he is. There are some irritating and even amateurish design elements, for which the publisher must carry the blame, but the book is a fascinating and rewarding insight into the thoughts and actions of a well-read and widely knowledgeable man. This book will leave you better informed and perhaps even wiser!