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From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jun 3, 2007 8:51 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times book reviews on pet grief and Doris Day’s animal rights - 6/3/07

The Sunday, June 3, New York Times Book Review has two reviews of interest to animal advocates. Critically acclaimed indie musician and animal rights activist Nellie McKay has written a review of a Doris Day biography and has focused on Day’s animal advocacy. The Book Review section also includes a review of “Dog Years, a Memoir” by Mark Doty, in which he explores his grief at the loss of his pets.

McKay’s article on Tom Santopietro’s “Considering Doris Day” is headed “Eternal Sunshine.” (p 50)

McKay discusses the Doris Day phenomena, then writes:

“Her pictures feature meat diets, carriage rides, careers in the cattle industry; they depict chicken-truck accidents as hilarious. In ‘Do Not Disturb,’ she saves a fox but sports a fur. Day is an inexhaustible animal advocate today, but these plotlines dismay because, as Tom Santopietro notes in ‘Considering Doris Day,’ ’she functioned as a role model through whom thousands of women worldwide lived vicariously.’ Day herself has mentioned projects she refused or changes she insisted on: she declined the role of Mrs. Robinson in ‘The Graduate’ (finding it exploitative) and had vulgarities removed from ‘Lover Come Back.’ She demanded proper care and feeding of the animals involved in the Alfred Hitchcock film ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much,’ which was shot partly in Morocco.

“What Day refuses to tolerate is relevant because while her performances were a product of their era, sales of her albums seem to double or triple with each passing year, and DVDs of her movies are increasingly popular. She may not have pursued a political image, but her effect is more intimate, and more powerful, than that of many politicians. A testament to this power is that the organizations founded in her name have attracted more than 180,000 members, continuing to draw attention to the issue of animal rights, which has been called the most progressive cause of our time.

“In 1977, she founded the Doris Day Pet Foundation (now the Doris Day Animal Foundation), and 10 years later the Doris Day Animal League, which focuses on lobbying Washington for pro-animal legislation, like bills ending the slaughter of horses for human consumption and creating a federal entity to review and approve alternatives to animal testing. The Animal League has also initiated a program called the Vicious Circle, which explores the connection between violence against animals and violence against people. (Santopietro repeatedly refers to Day as an ‘animal lover,’ a common misnomer. One doesn’t have to love animals to respect them. ‘Animal lover’ can’t help carrying a note of condescension, often used by those wishing to dismiss the larger issues at stake; it is similar to calling a white person who fights for civil rights a ‘Negro lover.’ Day cares for her companion animals, but what she has achieved through her organizations and lifestyle goes beyond affection: she’s
pursuing a change in the mind-set that allows human beings to treat other species as objects.) In 2006, the Animal League joined forces with the Humane Society of the United States, the largest animal protection organization in America.”

McKay admires Doris Day, ending her review by describing her as “terrific through and through.” The review is a fun and interesting read. You’ll find it on line at tinyurl.com/2ddwv7.

Danielle Chapman reviews poet Mark Doty’s new book “Dog Years, A Memoir.” The review is headed “Howl.” (p 44) Mark Doty is a winner of England’s T. S. Eliot Prize for poetry, the only American winner, for his 1993 collection ‘My Alexandria.’

Chapman writes:

“At a time when John Grogan’s ‘Marley & Me’ has revealed a public appetite for the gushing reveries of a dog owner, and Joan Didion’s ‘Year of Magical Thinking’ proved that readers can handle articulate narratives of grief, Doty has delivered a memoir that is both at once.”

We read:

“Doty’s dogs, Beau and Arden, have made many appearances in his work, so it’s not surprising that their deaths would inspire another memoir. ‘I am not, resolutely, used to it,’ Doty writes. ‘Too easy an acceptance seems, frankly, sentimental, an erasure of the particular irreplaceable stuff of individuality with a vague, generalized truth.’ And so begins his resurrection of that particular stuff: not only of Beau’s ‘beautiful rump’ or the corn-muffin smell of Arden’s ears, but of his own will to live without them. ‘My two speechless friends,’ he writes. ‘They were the secret heroes of my own vitality.’”

Chapman writes, “His descriptions of Beau and Arden frolicking around the Cape, Greenwich Village or the various locations of Doty’s teaching appointments can be both arresting and touching.”

But Chapman ends with:

“It’s no surprise, really, that a poet’s memoir about his dogs would turn into a book about mortality. Nor is it surprising that events that seem quite ordinary from the outside would be felt with this degree of intensity by a poet. But with its breathless aestheticizing of dog life, its melodrama and its rehashing of old material, ‘Dog Years’ often comes dangerously close to parodying Doty’s best work. While one never doubts the authenticity of Doty’s love for his dogs, one does doubt the wisdom of attempting to turn all of this into the stuff of high tragedy.”

Having not read Doty’s book, I cannot judge Chapman’s review. But I know that to many people on this list, the loss of our companion animals is indeed the stuff of high tragedy, so we might not react negatively, as the reviewer did, to that aspect of the book.

You’ll find the whole review on line at: tinyurl.com/2hjmhl.

Either or both of the reviews cited above present opportunities for animal friendly letters to the editor. The Book Review Section takes letters at books [at] nytimes.com.

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts dawnwatch doris day Doris Day Pet Foundation Doris Day Animal Foundation Doris Day Animal League Nellie McKay Mark Doty pet loss grief bereavement pet companion animal Tom Santopietro Danielle Chapman books book review NY Times book review section