Three Squirt Dog

If you're looking for transcendent prose or the wisdom of the ages, just keep marchin'. If you're looking for a few laughs and you're not overburdened with hothouse manners or ivory-tower sensibilities, you might enjoy Ridgway's novel. I found TSD through a Pauline Kael review in the New Yorker, and won over by my respect for that lady's opinions and the earthiness of the section she quoted, I decided to give it a whirl. Call me simple and easily amused, but I found plenty of low-rent laughs and even some things to think about. I liked Ridgway's cheerful and uncomplicated take on life outside, beyond, and below the ordinary. Bud is just living any twenty-something straight male's wet dream, and he's going to have to wake up some day very soon. I enjoyed spending a little time with him (strictly virtually) before he does.

This is a marvellous book. The tons of beer and the (supposed) grossness are just smoke in the eyes: this novel is about a clean-as-a-clean-sheet love. Mr Ridgway, I really hope to read about you and your books soon.

I was 9 when he was 21, but i grew up with people like him on my block, i would ride my bike by his house, he would have the door open and the screen door closed. and strange music i have never heard would be strained through the mesh and out into the street. you can almost make out bud making pancakes with a towel on his head, and omar drinking turpintine. a great book, very relaxing.

This was a great book, but you have to remember that you are reading the mind of a 21 year old boy who has yet to deiscover the real world. If you take any book to seriously you'll zap the fun out of it. This is a very funny, very sexy and sometimes a little nasty peice of writing. I highly recomend this book.

I walked into the world of "Three Squirt Dog" without expectations whatsoever, except for a vague fear of crappy trendoid novels with overhip covers released only in paperback. But when I started reading, it was like being slapped in the face with a big glob of extra-tasty chocolate pudding - a real mess, but an embarassing pleasure. "Three Squirt Dog" is sort of like "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" continued, in which we see what would happen to those intrepid adventurers once they got into music and bad food and moved to Ohio. It could very well be the teenage trials and tribulations of Guided by Voices lead singer/auteur/savant Robert Pollard, for all its iconoclastic love of indie rock, good sex, and good trouble. The book carried me through on a whirlwind of mania and mischief and modern bon mots, led by the sardonic grin and engaging voice of our intrepid hero as he negotiates the path of the adult still living the life of a late adolescent. The perspective is refreshing - to Ridgway, it doesn't completely suck to be nineteen and working in a record store, and Gen X wisdom is as useful as anything else in a commodified Death Star culture. Take that, Peter Sacks! -Dan Kois