Beastly Man

Birds might not have been a bad ideas. From Flaubert's parrot to W. H. Hudson, to say nothing of Poe's raven, there are birds to be had by the dozens in books. The skies of fiction are black with them. The trees sing. (And, AND, many are delicious. However, sensitive to the tender emotions of some of our listeners, best avoid Babette's Feast, and the usual roast goose, and or the prize turkey, "big as a boy," hanging in the poulterer's window, in Dickens, for instance.) We might even have got away with a hunting story, as I can think of at least one American, and another English, in which the bird outsmarts the dogs and or the sportsmen. Aesop has some awfully clever birds. Even limiting ourselves to just domesticated fowl, there's still plenty of variety. For heaven's sake, Dumas, père, had a vulture, among other feathered pets in his ménagerie!

But there was no one piped up for the birds. We started with dogs. Dogs were the point. Cats could not be ignored, though I had reservations I'll try to address later. I thought someone might speak up for Flika or Black Beauty, but as the bookstore does not actually employ ten year old girls, that proved not to be an issue, and no one mentioned so much as the Houyhnhnms in defense of the equine. Reading Wodehouse, I naturally thought of pigs as well.

But, no. As it now stands, we will have three days of dogs, and one of cats, and that will be that.

I speak of course of the upcoming reading series, Dog Days, at the bookstore where I work. Every Saturday in August, from six until the store closes at seven, we will be reading classic short animal stories, all to do with our best four-footed friends. (Please come if you can.)

The initial inspiration for these readings came in the latest volume in the wonderful Everyman's Library series of new short story anthologies, each organized by theme, the latest being, forthrightly enough, Dog Stories. See? Perfect idea. Like all the best books in this series to date, this little book of treasures, old and new, was selected and edited by Diana Secker Tesdell, about whom otherwise I have been unable to learn a damned thing. What I do know is that every book she has edited for this series has been wonderful -- and that any she didn't, hasn't been. (I still use and sell her first collection, Christmas Stories, every year for my Capote Christmas reading. Still the prettiest and best such book, at a perfectly affordable price, that I know.) At least two of the dog stories included in this latest, if not more, I hope to hear at our readings: I may yet read the Kipling story aloud, though it's a bit long for our purposes, and I very much hope to get a coworker I still have in mind to read the Penelope Lively, which would be better aloud, I think, in a woman's voice.

As it turns out, Tesdell has a book of Cat Stories coming, but not until October, too late for our purpose this summer, but something for readers to keep in mind, come October 18th, when it will be released.

I mention some of the other possibilities above because, having hit on the idea of Dog Days, the very first person I ran the idea past was my beloved friend and supervisor, P., a woman very much devoted to her two beautiful young cats. "What about cats?" asked P., predictably enough. Sigh.

It isn't as if dear P. doesn't like dogs. She is in fact one of the cadre of animal enthusiasts in the bookstore who seem to share the uncanny ability to scent fur at any distance, and she descends with the rest en masse onto the sales floor whenever anything remotely lovable pads unsuspecting through the front door. P. is almost sure to be in the pack. It is a sight. They come from the four corners, these women, and quickly surround and admire nearly to the point of insensibility every canine lucky enough to be caught.

Her strong suggestion that we not neglect the feline then, expresses an admirable loyalty and fairness, rather than a strict preference or any sense of grievance. Thus the 20th of August, of necessity, has been set aside for cat stories. Having no wish to be difficult, I will contribute one of Saki's most famous stories," Tobermory."

The point being that we might just as easily be reading stories about ferrets, or birds, or Betsy Barker's Alderney Cow, from Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, come to that. Animals other than Homo sapiens sapiens figure throughout fiction, and much as dogs numerically, I should think, are far and away the most popular subject, they are far from being of exclusive interest, or alone in our affection. Never the less, given the confines of space and time in the series as planned, cats have proved to be the only concession of necessity made. This is not, after all, so an ark that we are launching so much as a skiff, designed to pass a pleasant summer's hour together, once a week for a month.

All of this I mention because in the week after the signs for the reading series went up, before we had so much as decided on what is to be read when and by whom, I have already heard from any number of unhelpful people that we really ought to read something about _____, particularly the famous story by ______, even though it's nothing to do with dogs.

Really?

Should we do another series some day, on say the theme of "Love" in February, or Irish short stories in March, I can not frankly imagine that there would be nearly so many opinions proffered on what we might read as there have been on this occasion. As broad as the word love, and as specific as one might think the Irish might be, I do not doubt that folks not directly involved might find plenty to suggest. But on the subject of animals, people are, quite simply, mad.

What we can not read about dogs is of itself a list too long to include here. Suffice it to say that dogs must never die, ought not to suffer, or even be unduly discomforted, whatever may tragically happen to the human beings around them. Dogs must not fight, or bite, or be in any way villainous or even bad tempered, unless most cruelly provoked, in which case the story sounds too unpleasant anyway, etc. And all that, mind, is just to do with dogs.

Among the suggestions I've had to date are that we ought to read something about chimps or gorillas, as these are, even I would agree, fascinating animals. Yet other than The Murders in the Rue Morgue, is there an ape in fiction not in the company of a nearly naked man, and in bad prose? Lions I've had thrown at my head likewise, and tigers and bears... oh my.

Fundamentally what seems to be the source of the confusion here is that the proposed readings are not intended to celebrate the assumed superiority of the four-footed, or just to tell stories, but to read aloud great short fiction in which the animals traditionally nearest our hearts are central to the tale. Now what the animal-mad readers I've encountered seem not to have noticed in our promotional materials is that this, as with every reading we've organized likewise, is meant to be about reading good writing aloud, whatever the organizing theme. Yes, we come hopefully to please and praise the lovers of dogs, but also the lovers of great books. I don't see that we need choose between good writing and good dogs, do you?

What will be excluded, if I can help it, is the fulsome, often cloying animism of most popular, contemporary animal writing, specially the kind of thing that seems most common in the pet-memoir and other, non-instructional, animal-oriented nonfiction. It's all well and good that someone's Persian Blue saved her life or marriage, or that a Golden Retriever taught a family how to love. It's lovely that a cub raised in a Manhattan apartment and released into the wild should recognize his foster-fathers years later. What's cuter than a gorilla asking for hugs in sign language -- except maybe a gorilla that loves kittens? Admirable animals all, human and otherwise. That there are devoted readers of this sort of story, in hardcover no less, as a bookseller, I must applaud. But with one thin hour to fill each Saturday evening in August, I think we would do better to concentrate first on the quality of the writing to be read though, don't you? We can hardly do justice to to the whole of sentient evolution in that time, now can we? Whereas, we might be able to make someone laugh with something silly from Wodehouse, or typically smart from Twain. We might move not just someone's heart with the story of the great dog Rab of Edinburgh, but move that same listener to read the great author of that story, Dr. John Brown, who wrote not only of that dog and others, but many charming and wonderful essays and stories and letters besides.

That, to my mind at least, is the real point of these readings. As much fun as these things can be, both for readers and audience, there is also always the chance that we might, in this way, find new readers for great writers, old and new, and lead someone present to a book they may have forgotten or might never otherwise have known.

So, fair warning, even though I admit to being specially careful in our selections to not offend or in any way willingly put off the very people happiest in the company of dogs, cats, canaries and any or everything else that fetches, or flies, purrs, barks, sings or slithers, I hope whoever comes to hear us read will come in the hope of great stories and good company rather than in expectation of worship. It's not the Blessing of the Animals, people, it's a bookstore reading.

That in mind though, if I haven't already offended you too much, or your pets, please, do bring your dogs. We love dogs.