E.B. White On Dogs

Golden Retrievers are living proof that an entire "species" can be good.

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Literary history brims with famous authors who adored their pets, and E. B. White — extraordinary essayist, celebrator of New York, champion of integrity, upholder oflinguistic style — was chief among them. He had a dozen dogs over the course of his long life, including his beloved Scotty Daisy, who was not only the only witness to White’s wedding to the love of his life but also “wrote”this utterly endearing letter to Katharine White on the occasion of her pregnancy. In E. B. White on Dogs (public library), Martha White, Elwyn’s granddaughter and literary executor, collects the beloved author’s finest letters, poems, sketches, and essays celebrating his canine companions.

In the introduction to the anthology, White’s granddaughter poignantly observes that her grandfather revealed so much of himself through his writing about his dogs, riffing on his poignant obituary for Daisy:

My grandfather also suffered from a chronic perplexity, I believe, and he spent his career trying to take hold of it, not infrequently through the literary device of his dogs.

In this particular case, it seems, Malcolm Gladwell was wrong in asserting,“Dogs are not about something else. Dogs are about dogs.” Dogs, for White, were about dogs, but also about how to be human.

Sample this fantastic collection with some of White’s gems here and here.