Cute premise and fairly suavely executed by Dunsany but one of the all time worst cop-out endings. I love dogs. Why are dog books always so disappointing?

The movie version with Sam Neil and Peter O’Toole in his last role is great, by the way. ( )

This novella by Lord Dunsany is both profound and at the same time shallow.
It concerns a Victorian Churchman who dependent on your point of view,either thinks that he used to be a dog,or actually,in another life was one. A young man who is a member of Dean Spanley's club,hears certain rumours going about and decides to follow them up. By inviting the Dean to his house and carefully plying him with just the right amount of a certain expensive wine (Imperial Tokay) he gets his visitor in the mood to forget he is human and remember the facts of his canine existence.
When the Dean (or rather dog) speaks about his life as a dog,the story springs to life. he tells of the animals he has chased,of his friend,Lion-Hunter and the smells and sounds he experienced. The humans on the other hand,are rather lifeless and cardboard-cutout like.
This edition also contains the Screenplay and photographs from the film version which,frankly add little to the whole. ( )

What makes this story incomparable is the extraordinary vitality and charm of the counsels given by Moon Chaser (a dog which Dean Spanley's spirit was manifested as in a previous life). The human (and technically 'alive') characters come out looking quite spectral in comparison with Moon-Chaser. They and the surrounding plot seem to me to act merely as a vehicle for the incandescent counsels of the ‘dead’ dog.

Moon-Chaser (the gender is never specified, so I'm going to arbitrarily call it 'her') advises the humans on the living of a "well-planned life" by sharing in detail the rationale behind her daily activities:

"If you find anything good, hide it. The world is full of others; and they all seem to get to know if you have found anything good. It is best therefore to bury it. And to bury it when no one is looking on. And to smooth everything over it. Anything good always improves with keeping a few days. And you know it’s always there when you want it. I have sometimes smoothed things over it so carefully that I have been unable to find it when requiring it, but the feeling that it’s there always remains."

Thus, Moon Chaser (as she calls herself privately; she is known as 'Wag' to her humans) details her day-to-day 'life choices' (barking at pigs, fighting with other dogs, peeing on carriage wheels) solemnly, yet at the same time with irrepressible joie de vivre. The intense appreciation of simple things, of which only dogs seem capable, expressed in the language of a formal, stuffy and "rather dull" (typically, perhaps?) Edwardian-era clergyman, provides ironic counterpoint.

"They gave me a very beautiful dinner. They were good women of great wisdom. And when I had finished what they had given me, and I had cleaned the plate as one should, I was fortunate enough to find a good deal of bacon-rind, which was kept in a treasury that I knew of, and which – by a great piece of luck – was well-mixed with some jam and some pieces of cheese, and a good deal of broom-sweepings with several different flavors, and one sausage, which happened to be old enough to give a distinct taste to the whole dish. It was a lovely dinner..."

I would rate this novella at 5 stars were it not for the flatness of the surrounding story and main human characters (including the narrator). However, the dog parts of the story are written with such extraordinary playfulness and love that you are unlikely to find another piece of writing quite like it. My theory for why the novella has "languished in obscurity" (as they say) for so long are twofold. Firstly, the lack-lustre presentation of the human characters and surrounding plot. But equally I think this story was both too far ahead of its time and too subtle to attract the attention and even controversy it might have otherwise.

In 'My Talks with Dean Spanley', Dunsany is having a gentle go - but still a go - at his contemporaries and at a central, and sacred, tenet of his contemporary Edwardian British culture. By making a dead dog (even briefly) a life guide of sorts to a group of British ‘gentlemen’ of the time (including a clergyman, i.e. a 'proper' life guide), the novella implicitly challenges the mindset, ideology, and culture which had as their central thesis that narrow, linear Christian heirarchy of earthly phenomena, The Great Chain of Being, in which Man is "one step below the angels", followed by women, quadrupeds, birds, insects, and dirt.

I think Dunsany's message was basically, "a dead dog could conduct its life with more spontaneity, zest and emotional honesty than you people", but this message delivered very gently and affably. ( )

with the screenplay by Alan Sharp