Dog Love

by Marjorie Garber

ISBN: 068481871X
ISBN-13: 9780684818719
Format: Hardcover

Summary

Harvard social critic, Marjorie Garber, reveals what our love for dogs says about us, and argues that it is with our pets that we permit ourselves to experience some of our strongest emotions, and that it is our dogs who make us human.

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"[A] wry, literate study of dogs in human culture....Quick-witted and entertaining."

   -- Kirkus

"The significance [Garber] ascribes to dogs, the profundity she sees in human relations with dogs, the depth of passion and knowledge she brings to the subject-all these are, I'm afraid, beyond me. No doubt fellow dog cultists will lap up this dog book...But others, alas, will be either faintly annoyed by the tone of the book (as I was, for much of it) or simply baffled. One thing they won't be is uninformed. The bulk of this book is swaths of loosely organized-and entertaining-facts about dogs."    -- Andrew Sullivan

   -- New York Times Book Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published date: 1996
Size: 6.5 x 9.5 inches
Weight: 1.45 pounds

Publisher's Notes

Roving from real life to "dogs' lives" (canine biography and autobiography), kennel clubs to leash laws, "puppy love" to dogs as emblems of mourning and loss, Dog Love unleashes a fresh perspective on a favorite topic. What do the stories of such "celebrity hounds" as Lassie and Millie Bush have to say about the demands we place on their human counterparts in political life and popular culture? In an age when information abounds but comprehension seems to be breaking down, how do fantasies about canine communication express our longing to be understood? Why are we able to accept in our pets the very mix of emotional constancy and sexual inconstancy that dogs our human partnerships? How does our preoccupation with canine pedigree reflect social snobbery, nationalism, and other forms of cultural anxiety? What does the growing body of dog law have to say about our desires to regulate human behavior? Why is it that, from Argus onward, the dog has embodied our most elegiac feelings? In exploring these and other questions, Dog Love shows how, in a society that is less and less "humane", it is with the dog that we permit ourselves to experience and express our deepest sorrows and joys. As this profound and profoundly delightful book makes plain, it is the dog who makes us human.

Other Editions

Hardcover - Simon & Schuster (1996) - from $1.00
Paperback Reprint - Simon & Schuster (1997) - from $1.00

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Dog Love

by Marjorie Garber

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