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The challenge and inspiration of our animal companions
REVIEWS BY DEANNA LARSON
Dog lovers and literary groupies alike will adore Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte. This intimate glimpse of famous writers reveals brilliant, often reclusive and sometimes unbalanced artists who used beloved pets as confessors, companions, muses and even emotional stand-ins. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog Flush was her constant companion when he wasn't being snatched by the "dognappers" common in 19th-century London. Flush became a literary go-between and romantic rival when the dashing Robert Browning came to call; he bit Browning twice, but they made up while walking the streets of Italy. Emily Bronte, who grew up to write the wild and disturbing Wuthering Heights, displayed disturbing behavior as a young girl by beating the family's mastiff, then nursing its wounds. Edith Wharton posed with two Chihuahuas perched on her shoulders and obsessed over an annoying pack of Pekinese to avoid her husband's infidelities and mental illness. Virginia Woolf described her purebred puppy as "an angel of light" who made her husband believe in God, perhaps counterbalancing the fact that the dog wet the floor eight times in one day. And Carlo the Newfoundland was the only audience for the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, who insisted that she was "more interested in Carlo's approval than writing to please the public." When the dog died, Dickinson's brief note to a friend was as poignant as any of her poems. "Carlo died," she wrote. "Would you instruct me now?"
By Maureen Adams Ballantine, $24.95 284 pages ISBN 9780345484062
By Ted Kerasote Harcourt, $25 416 pages ISBN 9780151012701
By Erin E. Williams and Margo DeMello Prometheus, $20 290 pages ISBN 9781591025238
Deanna Larson deepens her own humanity with two bearded collies in Nashville.
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Throughout history, humans have tried to dominate rather than relate to nature, but this century's global issues prove that an understanding and compassionate relationship with the natural world is essential to our survival. Enlightening but never sweet or superficial, these new books legitimize the key role animals play in human lives.
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The dilemma of the canine's true nature is explored by award-winning writer Ted Kerasote in Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog. Touches of a crunchy-granola-hippie philosophy infuse the story that begins when a dog approaches outdoorsman Kerasote and his friends while they're on a river camping trip in Utah. Apparently living on its own in the scrub among the Navajo, the friendly Lab mix endears itself to the whole camp; when they pack up for their next site downriver, the dog runs along the shore, unsure about leaving behind its familiar territory. But as in the best Disney story, the dog jumps into the boat at the very last second and chooses—somewhat loosely—Kerasote as his companion. Merle and the free-spirited writer return to his small Wyoming town and settle into the give-and-take of getting to know each other, mano-a-dogo. Kerasote observes, romanticizes, admires and resorts to the inexplicable to indulge, then curb Merle's behavior, confused about how to help the dog adjust to life with humans while remaining "wild." Though he often takes the observations of experts (Dr. Temple Grandin, the Monks of New Skete, Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, Dr. Richard Skinner) out of context to bolster his own preconceptions, Kerasote retains deep respect for Merle's essential nature and longing for freedom. Blasting out of his doggie door to explore the countryside, visiting neighbors and hunting wild animals then returning to home and hearth, Merle leads Kerasote to ponder, make mistakes, love and learn. The unapologetic imperfection of Kerasote's choices proves that relationships with dogs are as complicated as human ones, a reflection of our own essential humanity.
More than 65 million American households have a pet, so it's difficult to comprehend that many living creatures in this country are neglected, abused and cruelly murdered each year. Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection explores this contradiction as it exposes the suffering of domestic and wild animals in America. Bypassing "complicated philosophical arguments," authors Erin E. Williams of the Humane Society of the United States and Margo DeMello of the House Rabbit Society coolly present sordid details of the human-animal "relationship" in America, from the meat, textile, hunting and medical experiment industries, to the use of animals as family and entertainment. The realities are brutal and no myths are left unturned: That delicious Sunday roasted chicken survived on a factory farm in a cage so small it couldn't flap its wings, covered in feces and fattened until it couldn't stand, to provide dinner at the cheapest price possible. Rationalizations and arguments about history, necessity and overpopulation don't stand up to the heavily footnoted studies and points made here; if you're going to eat that chicken, at least honor it by acknowledging what it went through to get to your table. Why Animals Matter ends with a manifesto for compassion and decency toward all living things, but remains a difficult look at America's heart of darkness.