Friday, July 10, 2015

"Dogs I Am Confident Have Arranged Many, Many Things Better Than We Do"

First, I Do An On-Line Search
Cartoon by Arnie Levin
Published in the New Yorker October 5, 1998

I went to my (second) favorite spot to read - the Whole Foods Market cafe - with my newly acquired (for TEN dollars, down from FORTY EIGHT dollars!) book, The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs.

Here is what the reviewers say about it:
...the amused insouciance, the self-deprecation, the gentle unfolding of a structural irony, the skip and reveal of the final sentence, the knowledge of Not Too Much that seems intrinsic to the New Yorker. And cartoons.”—Edmund De Waal, The Spectator
But, above all, it's funny, in that canine way, where all things are about the dog.

Thurber Dog With Butterfly for Nora, 1937
Illustration by James Thurber
Dogs, I am confident, would have arranged many, many things better than we do. They would have in all probability averted the Depression, for they can go through lots tougher things than we and still think it's boom time. They demand very little of their heyday; a kind word is more to them than fame, a soup bone more than gold; they are perfectly contented with a warm fire and a good book to chew (preferably an autographed first edition lent by a friend).
James Thurber, from "Dogs I Have Scratched"