Rick Moody is the author of six novels, three collections of stories, two memoirs, and a volume of essays on music. Chloe Shaw on when she first asked, "What Is a Dog?": "I wrote from a place of ...

Moody's first foray into nonfiction is a curious amalgam of family history, literary criticism and recovery memoir. The title refers to Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," which ...