This is a remarkable book. While I thought the prose was uneven ... at times outstanding, at times merely recondite (that's one of Dahlberg's words) and at times strange, the underlying story is one of the most moving and beautiful around.

The source of the beauty may be its honesty. Dahlberg refuses to be a victim or hate people who've done horrible things to him. (He's no chump, either.)

It's a tough read, and you may need a dictionary on hand (I did), but a worthwhile experience.

The first time that I read this book, I really enjoyed it. The second time, I was overwhelmed by its richness and beauty. Dahlberg is able to awaken language with golden ideas of how he sees the world. The story, though painful at times is wonderfully executed. Dahlberg allows his reader to see life as Edward Dahlberg percieved it when he was a child, and then later as a grown man. He's definitely an author who has received little attention, though he deserves so much more. His work, though challenging is fulfilling. And though it is hard to locate, another work of his, "Can These Bones Live," is another wonderfully written work. He takes on all of the writers of his time, and tells them exactly what he thinks about them. Read! Read! Read!

Frank Gado at Union College introduced me to this book 15 years ago or so in a course on biographical literature. Dahlberg was a true prose master and the story he tells of his early life is so wrenching---particularly the last few pages... It seems a terrible shame that this author should be so comprehensively forgetten today. Read this book!

This is a most unusual book, of interest chiefly as that rarest of literary objects, a manifesto of pessimism. Dahlberg's intent seems to have been as much to display his bulging erudition and arch, archaic way with words as to decry man's slavery to the sexual urge. His ostensible subject is often buried beneath an avalanche of classical, historical, and anthropological allusions, but at least the book is riddled with eccentric epithets along the lines of "Man is double, and who may know his heart: he is a moral hermaphrodite." The author's tone is judgmental and defiant throughout, but that doesn't energize the book. The tedium of reading finally overwhelms any interest his oblique approach might provide, and there are no illuminating observations about the eternal itch, merely a catalogue of references to Greek gods, Mayan myths, and "primeval potherbs."

Get me another scotch and turn on the lava lamp! I started reading this one, and then started thumbing around from front to back, and I still don't know what is going on -- but it was sure interesting while it lasted!

I found this book at a library book sale, so excuse me for not knowing anything about its literary pretensions or context.

WARNING, right off: You will have no idea what this book is about unless you take a class on this guy, which is probably unlikely, or have an odd, non-Hefnerian view of sex. Or if you're the sort to sit in a tweed blazer and monocle and snicker alone late at night over the Discovery channel with one hand down your pants.

When an author starts off by telling you unabashedly that he's going to use the whole range of the English vocabulary going back to the Elizabethans, whether you know what he's talking about or not, and then goes off to frolic around in weird, wordy and highly literary word-acrobatics about copulation and who-knows-what, you know you've gotten into something not exactly "summer reading."

I'm not sure who this book was intended for (from the intro, I'd say no-one), but it's always good to have it on your shelf, especially if the title is prominently displayed, and you can pull it out periodically and read vague and archly erudite chuckles about pudenda and whatnot.

As for "misanthropic," well, ya got me there. Really, that's just nitpicking with a book this weird.