The Dog, The Family: A household Tale

Summary
In August Kleinzahler’s description of his childhood years, which seems to center around his dog, a pure bred boxer named Twenty Grand, or Granny for short after a famous racehorse. He identifies how as a member of the household, the dog became more influential in his upbringing and more important than some other members of his family. The constant criticism that Kleinzahler claims he would receive from his parents and grandmother would generally be grounds for the beginning of a depressing memoir. His crazy descriptions of his glue sniffing brother or bookworm sister help shed a different light on what was certainly not a flattering childhood. The way he describes it, in fact, makes everything that happened seem funny, for example, the dog and children hiding in fear in the upstairs bathroom while their father went off and destroyed everything in sight. Kleinzahler also claims that he was a mistake, that he was conceived while his mother was in a drunken frenzy, and that her mother had an insane rule over his mom and her sisters. These are all ingredients for a disastrous childhood, but through the eyes of August Kleinzahler, it all seems almost normal. He makes it hard not to laugh at such gruesome misfortune, the way he describes the various characters in his early childhood, especially the dog.
As the author describes the importance of his dog, he also goes on to equally describe the many interesting and unique characters of his family along with the many challenges they faced. Being an “unplanned accidental misfortune”, his family members were evidently focused on their own personal obsessions. His mother had Shakespeare, his father had his “sacred figures”, his sister had her Latin, and his brother had his own ways of distancing himself from his family. His grandmother, Nanny Farbisseneh, was a very cruel