Synopses & Reviews
It's not always easy to be a dog-to be a companion to those strange human animals, as Roger Grenier shows us on this literary dog walk. In forty-three self-contained and lovingly crafted vignettes, esteemed French author Grenier visits the great dogs of history and legend, beginning at the beginning, with Ulysses and his dog, Argos, the only creature to recognize him after years of absence. From Virginia Woolf, who became the self-appointed biographer of Flush, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, to André Gide, whose diary records his bemusement at his dog's propensity to mount his ancient cat, Grenier reveals how dogs have inspired writers.
Grenier also surveys the opinions, writings, and experiences of men and women throughout history for clues to the mysterious symbiosis between people and dogs. He introduces us to Freud's chow Lün, who was able to make him understand he was about to die; to Fala, FDR's Scottish terrier, who now has his own statue in Washington; and to Michael and Jerry, the heroes of Jack London's novels. We learn of the dog who shared Napoleon's bed and of the dogs collected and deported from the city of Constantinople in 1910, sent to a desert island without food or water. Along the way, Grenier tells us about a few of the dogs who have occupied his own life and heart. Though the rapport between dogs and people remains a mystery, it is also, for him, the source of the purest form of love.
Grenier's poetic sense of the streets of Paris, his artful use of literary quotation, and his humor and humanity made The Difficulty of Being a Dog an immediate bestseller in France. "A pet is a protection against life's insults, a defense against the world," writes Grenier. His book reminds us on every page of that sentiment, making it the perfect literary companion for dog lovers and the perfect dog book for literature lovers.
Synopsis
The forty-three lovingly crafted vignettes within
The Difficulty of Being a Dog dig elegantly to the center of a long, mysterious, and often intense relationship: that between human beings and dogs. In doing so, Roger Grenier introduces us to dogs real and literary, famous and reviled—from Ulysses's Argos to Freud's Lün to the hundreds of dogs exiled from Constantinople in 1910 and deposited on a desert island—and gives us a sense of what makes our relationships with them so meaningful.
About the Author
Roger Grenier, an editor at �ditions Gallimard, has published over thirty novels, short stories, and literary essays and is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Grand Prix de Litt�ature de l'Acad�mie Fran�aise.Alice Kaplan is the author of French Lessons: A Memoir, The Collaborator, The Interpreter, and Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis, and the translator of OK, Joe, The Difficulty of Being a Dog, A Box of Photographs, and Palace of Books. Her books have been twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, once for the National Book Award, and she is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She holds the John M. Musser chair in French literature at Yale. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut.
Table of Contents
Preface
An Enigma
The Difficulty of Being a Dog
A Reproachful Glance
The World of Odors
Low Life
Dogs' Paradise
A Dog with a Past
Flaubert, from Python to Parrot
The Walk down the Rue du Bac
To Be Loved
A dog, yes, but...
Friends of Animals
Our Great Men
Heroes and Refugees
Larbaud, or Bourgeois Follies
Identification
Vocation
Fantasies, Symbols, Signals
Metaphysics
Voltaire versus Rousseau
First Prize
Animal-Machines
Modestine
Gaston Febus
Two Hunters
The Brutes
To the East
The Island of Oxias
Enemies
Evolution
Questions of Vocabulary
A Dog's Heart
Dreams after Ulysses' Death
Flush
The Fiancèe of Goering's Dog
On Pure Love
Misanthropes
Dog and Cat
The Night in Hendaye
Debtors
Dino, Queneau's Dog
Horse, Goat, Dog
The Dog-Book
Translator's Note