White Dog

First American Edition. Fine in original black and white cloth and fine pictorial dust jacket. Unfaded spine. Octavo. 5.75 x 8.5 in. [vi], 279 + [3] pp. A great copy.

A notable work by this jet-setting French novelist / diplomat / filmmaker, centering around the attempted 'de-programming' of a German Shepherd that had been trained, presumably by Southern racists, to attack and kill Black people; Gary, who finds the dog as a stray in the beginning of the book, elicits the help of an African-American animal handler in his attempt to cure the hound of its learned racism. Often characterized as a 'nonfiction autobiographical novel,' most of the book reads pretty much as a straight memoir -- albeit with some individuals anonymized -- of Gary's involvement in the American leftist/progressive political scene (Hollywood chapter) of the day. His presence in that milieu was in large measure due to the even deeper immersion of his then-wife, activist/actress Jean Seberg, who was notorious (at least in the eyes of the FBI) for her support (financial and otherwise) for numerous civil rights organizations, as well as more radical groups such as the Black Panthers. Most of the book's action takes place in Los Angeles during the tumultuous summer of 1968, and although Seberg is certainly present throughout the narrative, it's clear that she and Gary (who had been married since 1962) were by this time pretty much on the outs: she filed for divorce in September of that year, in fact, and one of the interesting things to contemplate about the book is that it was written and published in the period between then and the finalization of their split, in July 1970. But the book isn't about their marriage (except incidentally), nor can it be accurately described as being 'about' the titular canine: at its heart, it's an insightful, and often caustic, rumination on racism in America, from the perspective of a writer who was both an outsider (French, y'know) and an insider (privy to celebrity-studded fund-raising and virtue-signaling events). (There's a particularly cringe-inducing account of a Hollywood gathering at which Marlon Brando was a featured speaker.) Rather, the account of the ongoing efforts to un-train the racist dog is sprinkled episodically throughout the book -- although it's not so much a through-line of the narrative as it is a touchstone, spurring Gary to additional thoughts about the nature of race-based hatred and expressions of his hopes (and doubts) about human society's ability to overcome it. The book was originally published as 'Chien Blanc' in France in April 1970, with the English-language version -- not a translation, but rather the multi-lingual Gary's 'rewrite' for American readers -- appearing in September.

The book has grown in interest over the years for the not-unusual reason that, eventually, a movie was made from it -- and not just any movie, but a version directed and co-written by that most maverick and iconoclastic of Hollywood-based filmmakers, the late great Samuel Fuller, which was released (barely) in 1982. If you're not a cinephile, it's entirely possible you've never heard of this film -- let alone seen it -- but over time (especially after the issuance of a 'director's cut' by Criterion in 2008) it's achieved a cult-like status among Fuller aficionados. The history of its gestation, production and (especially) botched handling by Paramount Pictures is a saga unto itself, and a cautionary tale of what can happen when 'liberal' Hollywood finds itself with a genuinely controversial film on its hands. Fuller and his co-screenwriter, future director Curtis Hanson (who had actually been on the project since the mid-1970s, when Roman Polanski was briefly attached as director), basically jettisoned the overt politics of the book, and built the racist-dog story into an anti-racist thriller that, ironically, gained an undeserved pre-release reputation as an inflammatory, racist film.