SOURCE: Brown, James. “Inside the Head of a Headcase.” Chicago Tribune Books (7 February 1993): 6.

In the following review, Brown views Recital of the Dog as an allegory about crime and punishment.

In the introduction to the first publication of his award-winning plays, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones, David Rabe remarked that earlier in his life he wrote both plays and novels and that he was “not dedicated to any one form.” But upon receiving a Rockefeller grant in playwriting not long after he returned from the Vietnam War, Rabe's thought, as he recalled it, was, “I'll dash off some plays real quick, then focus in on the novel. [Playwriting] seemed artificial beyond what was necessary … [and] if things had turned out differently, I don't know if I would have written what I have in the way I have, but the grant was a playwriting...