Some Favorite Dogs in Books

Watching the National Dog Show on Sunday brought to mind the huge role dogs have had in literature.

From the earliest Greek tales down to the present, dogs have accompanied some of the most beloved and hated fictional characters, earning a big place in our memory. We all have our favorites. Here are a few of mine (in no particular order):

White Fang, a mixed wolf/dog in Jack London's stellar adventure novel. After a brutal early life, White Fang bonds with Weedon Scott in a manner sure to tug at the heartstrings of the most hardened of readers.

Lassie, a Rough Collie, is memorable from a book, films and TV serials. The creation of Eric Knight, Lassie is an over-the-top sentimental story of a dog bonding with humans.

Fred Gipson's story, Old Yeller, a Labrador Retriever/Mastiff mix, is a tragic character. If you haven't read the book, I'm sure you've seen or heard about the film. After heroically saving the lives of his owners, Yeller tangles with a rabid wolf and has to be put down.

Snowy (Milou), a Wire Fox Terrier, is the companion/rescuer of TinTin, the rather naive boy adventurer created by Herge. Unlike most dogs, Snowy is capable of speech (only with TinTin and other animals). I loved these comics as a boy.

Big Red, an Irish Setter, in Jim Kjelgaard's most famous novel, is owned by a man who wants to make him a show dog. Red gives his affection to a boy who happily accepts him, simply, as a dog.

Bull's Eye, breed not specified, Bill Sikes' dog, in Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist, is not a nice dog. Though considering his owner it's easy to see why. Bull's Eye has "faults of temper in common with his owner," but you can't deny his loyalty to his master.

Gnasher and Wolf, possibly Mastiffs, though breed is not specified, are among a number of memorable dogs in Emily Bronte's wonderful Wuthering Heights. Like Bull's Eye, they are not noted for their affectionate nature. Described as "hairy monsters," Lockwood first encounters them on a visit to his landlord, Heathcliff.

Then we have Lad, another Collie, almost as famous as Lassie, who began as a short story character created by Albert Payson Terhune, a dog lover if there ever was one. Terhune, a sportsman/adventurer who also bred Collies at his Sunnybank Kennels, penned more than 30 dog-focused novels. Harlan Ellison paid tribute to Terhune in his novella A Boy and a Dog.

Though not a fictional character or my favorite breed, there's Charley, a Poodle, who accompanied John Steinbeck on his 1960 road trip across the United States. Charley actually belonged to Steinbeck's wife, Elaine, but makes a good sounding board for the writer. The title was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels With a Donkey, an equally fascinating travel journal.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ketch, a German Shepherd, in my tale, The Limping Dog, and Change, Officer Flora Vastine's faithful Border Collie.

So, who are some of your favorite dogs in books?

Better Than An MFA

John Grisham wrote in the New York Times recently (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06Grisham.html?_r=1&th&emc=th) of the various jobs he held before becoming a popular and successful author.

Though always an avid reader, Grisham comes from a working class background. As he points out in this article, writing was not his childhood dream. He came to writing after a series of low-paying, dead-end jobs, a general law practice and a period as a legislator in Mississippi.

A Time to Kill, his first novel, was inspired by witnessing the testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim. It had a rocky road to publication and was not an immediate success. The Firm, his second effort, was the seventh best-selling novel of 1991 and paved the way for his new career.

In the Times article, Grisham calls writing the most difficult job he’s had.

Most of us who have come to writing—whether it was a childhood dream or not—have suffered a variety of other jobs over the years. There are few overnight successes in this business.

Personally, in my jobs resume, I can list periods as a waiter, fruit/vegetable picker, laborer on a roofing crew, clerk, warehouse worker, antiques picker, painter, chicken factory worker, among others before becoming a reporter and later newspaper editor. In the Army I went from rifleman to military police trainee, to reporter and editor.

Though I didn’t like many of these jobs at the time, I no longer regret any of them. They provide me a broad canvas of characters and knowledge. If we’re honest, I think most of us who write can be thankful for the insights into other ways of life these varied opportunities provide. It can’t be equaled by reading or in a classroom. Such knowledge is second-hand. Experience is the greatest teacher and imagination craves such stimulus.

The Secret Ingredient

Name your favorite novel.

Now consider what makes that novel stand out from others.

I’ll wager for many of us the answer will be character. Your particular favorite character may differ from mine. But many will cite Emma. Or David Copperfield. Ahab. Atticus Finch. Holden Caulfield. A dozen others who have achieved immortality in our imagination.

So what is it about our particular favorite character that resonates?

Again I’ll wager the answer is because the author has created a character who is as real to us as any flesh and blood person we’ve ever met. So how the heck did he/she do it and can we mere mortals hope to emulate such talent?

The answer is simple and involves no secret ingredient hidden from the hoi polloi.

Back at the beginning of the 20th century a physiologist named Jakob von Uexkull coined the term umwelt to describe the technique of stepping into another creature’s world. What he described was, in fact, nothing new but a revival of a lost art. Hunters did it from the beginning of time. In order to hunt a creature the successful hunter becomes, in essence, that creature. He enters its world and thinks as it does.

A nifty trick. But can anyone do it today?

Writers also have been doing it for a very long time.

This secret ingredient has another name. Empathy.

Webster describes it as: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.

Simple.

Not really. But it’s a talent which can be improved upon with practice. Do you think Dickens was capable of creating David Copperfield the first time he picked up pen to write? Of course not. Emma was not the first (or best) of Jane Austen’s creations.

All it takes is imagination and practice.

Here's to You, Dad

The Christian bible (and tenets of other religions) admonishes us to honor our fathers. Unfortunately, it’s taken us awhile to get around to it.

For instance, a day to honor them was first proposed in the U.S. in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, a Spokane, WA woman who thought fathers deserved equal recognition with mothers. But when President Woodrow Wilson suggested making it a national observance a few years later Congress balked, contending it would become commercialized. (Can you imagine Congress today missing an opportunity to commercialize anything?)

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine chastised Congress in 1957 for ignoring fathers while paying tribute to mothers. In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation. But it wasn’t until 1972 that it finally became a national holiday, signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

To say we have been remiss in failing to equally honor both our parents would be an understatement.

My Dad’s been gone 26 years now, but I don’t think there’s a day goes by that doesn’t remind me in some way of his character and guidance. I may not always have followed his advice. Yet, looking back on it now, I realize how often his judgment was right.

Dad was a railroader most of his working life, a rough and demanding occupation. He grow up in a tough and ethnically-mixed neighborhood in which he learned to use his fists as well as common sense and picked up a smattering of several languages. Dad also loved music and taught himself to play a number of musical instruments. He and my mother also had a local reputation as ballroom dancers. While my sister inherited some of this musical ability I missed out on that gene. I also love music, but I get static even trying to play it on the radio. As to dancing, I’m better at tripping over my own feet.

He was also one of the most creative people I’ve known. When my sister and I were young he spent many hours in his shop creating sulphur diamond jewelry and coal novelties which he sold to supplement his income. With the decline of deep mining, material for those pursuits became difficult to get and he turned his attention to ‘picking’ and restoring/refinishing antiques, an enterprise in which I joined him. We shared many happy hours attending sales and scouring the countryside for goods. This largely replaced the comradeship we had enjoyed earlier in hunting, fishing and camping and continued until I went off to the Army.

I cherish the fact we had those times together. I’m also glad he lived long enough for my children and my nieces to know him. He had a temper, never shirked saying what he felt and couldn’t stand a hypocrite. You always knew exactly where you stood with him and, if you were his friend, you couldn’t find a more loyal one.

So here’s to you, Dad. I’m not contributing to Hallmark’s bounty for a sloppily sentimental card. But I hope you know how much we love and miss you.

A Character Asserting Himself

I recently wrote two short stories featuring a country sheriff named Tilghman. The first, “Dangerous to Mess With,” is in the current issue of Mysterical-E (he’s not identified by name in this story, but it’s him). The second has been submitted to another venue and the result awaits to be seen.

Tilghman is now demanding a book and the process has got under way.

Characters can be like that. They pop up, sometimes seemingly out of no where, in a writer’s imagination, develop personalities and go on to lead us into stories.

Tilghman’s grandfather was in my first novel, Schlussel’s Woman, and his father has a bit role in Watch The Hour. Maybe he thinks it’s a family prerogative to be one of my characters.

Some people believe plot to be the essence of story. I beg to differ. Every story begins and ends with character. Plot develops from character. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (a wonderful book, by the way) defines character as “An oddity. One who has a distinctive peculiarity of manner.”

We remember Sherlock Holmes, not the plot of individual stories in the series. Long John Silver. The Count of Monte Cristo. The Three Musketeers. Ripley. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Need I go on?

Plot is nothing more than the path a character takes and which entails us to follow. Philip Roth said he begins a novel with a character in his predicament. Or as Lester Dent says in his famous formula, “Introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble.”

Seems like a sound plan to me.

Lead on Tilghman.