Dog Love

by Marjorie Garber

Marjorie Garber, the director of the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard University, has produced a book that is very much in the tradition of another recent paean to canines, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' The Hidden Life of Dogs . Thomas' book, however, somehow failed to inform us that a 1958 TV series pilot promisingly named "Superpup" narrowly missed making it to the small screen. Or that the world "puppy" comes from the French poupee , meaning "doll." Or a host of other fascinating, and not-so-fascinating, dog lore served up by Garber. When Garber writes about the intimate, supra-verbal bond that can develop between dogs and their masters, she tells us engagingly what we already sense. When she relates anecdotes of notable courage and loyalty in dogs, she describes what most dog owners already know. And when she argues that the love and loyalty of dogs towards their human masters can serve as a model for a more just and compassionate human society, well, you just can't help but want to go along with her.

Genres: Animals, Dogs, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 1996

About the author

Marjorie B. Garber (born June 11, 1944) is a professor at Harvard University and the author of a wide variety of books, most notably ones about William Shakespeare and aspects of popular culture including sexuality.

She wrote Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, a ground breaking theoretical work on transvestitism's contribution to culture. Other works include Sex and Real Estate:Why We Love Houses, Academic Instincts, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Shakespeare After All, and Dog Love (which is not primarily about bestiality, except for one chapter titled "Sex and the Single Dog").

Her book Shakespeare After All (Pantheon, 2004) was chosen one of Newsweek's ten best nonfiction books of the year, and was awarded the 2005 Christian Gauss Book Award from Phi Beta Kappa.

She was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A., 1966; L.H.D., 2004) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1969).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Dev Scott Flores]

An author who loves literature, bisexuals/transgendered and dogs - how could you go wrong?

[David Swatling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this back in 1998. Loved it then, love it still!

[Wolf Ostheeren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the original edition, zero for the German translation. That was completely incomprehensible in places

[Michelle Taylor]

Garber’s work is remarkable for its ability to appeal to a general audience—not just a wide variety of scholars, but also the general public. Its approach, then, is somewhat different from that of a more traditional academic monograph. It features short sections on a wide variety of thematically-grouped chapters, which focus on: the ubiquity of canine heroes; “talking dogs” and pet-owner communication; the stigmas attached to childless couples and single women who own dogs; the history of eroticism between dogs and humans; the phenomenon of breeding; laws pertaining to dogs; and “dog loss”/pet mourning. She illustrates her points with literary passages, historical events, pop culture references, and even personal anecdotes. The statements she makes in her introduction are echoed throughout the book, which is best described as a defense of its title, “dog love.” She writes: “It’s not that people feel less, or less strongly, about other people than about their dogs—at least for the most part. It’s rather that the overwhelming dimension of human need sometimes makes the task of reparation seem hopeless. Dog love is local love, passionate, often unmediated, virtually always reciprocated, fulfilling, manageable. Love for humans is harder.” Nevertheless, she insists that “dog love is not evasive or a substitution” (14). The chapters work out the complications of her introductory statement, always demonstrating that dogs reflect human desire at the same time as they are viewed as truly individualized beings by those that love them—and that this second role is in no way inferior to the first. It is this widely-appreciated sentiment, along with its accessible style, that made the book the trade success it was and is.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

eh.