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The Difficulty of Being a Dog Paperback – April 1, 2002

by Roger Grenier (Author), Alice Kaplan (Translator)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
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The forty-three lovingly crafted vignettes within The Difficulty of Being a Dog dig elegantly to the center of a long, mysterious, and often intense relationship: that between human beings and dogs. In doing so, Roger Grenier introduces us to dogs real and literary, famous and reviled—from Ulysses's Argos to Freud's Lün to the hundreds of dogs exiled from Constantinople in 1910 and deposited on a desert island—and gives us a sense of what makes our relationships with them so meaningful.
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  1. Print length
    139 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Chicago Press
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    7.94 x 5.32 x 0.44 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0226308286
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0226308289
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

The forty-three lovingly crafted vignettes within The Difficulty of Being a Dog dig elegantly to the center of a long, mysterious, and often intense relationship: that between human beings and dogs. In doing so, Roger Grenier introduces us to dogs real and literary, famous and reviled—from Ulysses's Argos to Freud's Lün to the hundreds of dogs exiled from Constantinople in 1910 and deposited on a desert island—and gives us a sense of what makes our relationships with them so meaningful.

From the Back Cover

The forty-three lovingly crafted vignettes within The Difficulty of Being a Dog dig elegantly to the center of a long, mysterious, and often intense relationship: that between human beings and dogs. In doing so, Roger Grenier introduces us to dogs real and literary, famous and reviled—from Ulysses's Argos to Freud's Lün to the hundreds of dogs exiled from Constantinople in 1910 and deposited on a desert island—and gives us a sense of what makes our relationships with them so meaningful.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press (April 1, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 139 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226308286
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226308289
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.94 x 5.32 x 0.44 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 15 ratings

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Roger Grenier

Roger Grenier

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
15 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

julia adeney thomas
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece!
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2000
A real surprise and delight. This beautiful little book consists of about forty short chapters about the bond between people and dogs. Grenier shuttles between charming recollections of his late dog Ulysses and tales of dogs who preoccupied great figures in Western culture. He tells, for instance, how Sartre summed up the difficulty of being a dog: dogs are forever straining to understand us, but what they comprehend most keenly is that we're beyond their grasp. Rilke, along the same lines, called dogs "tragic and sublime" because "their determination to acknowledge us forces them to live at the very limits of their nature, constantly-through the humanness of their gaze, their nostalgic nuzzlings-on the verge of passing beyond those limits." The book, which is translated (very gracefully) from the French, makes a nice European respite for American lovers of dog literature. There is, for instance, Grenier's account of a time when Communist authorities in Czechoslovakia saw dog ownership as a kind of subversion: walking his own dog in Prague, Grenier hears a young man call out to him, "Long live the dogs!" All in all, I would rank this with J. R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip, James Herriot's dog stories, and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's books among the masterpieces of canine celebration.
112 people found this helpful
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Omar G
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2021
Dogs throughout the ages
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R. M. Peterson
4.0 out of 5 stars For dog-lovers with a literary bent.
Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2014
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Having read two other lovely books by Roger Grenier -- plus the fact that I have had dogs for over sixty years -- I was favorably predisposed towards THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING A DOG. It is a thin book, consisting of about forty short pieces about dogs (one paragraph to five pages each).

It contains ruminations about dogs and their relationships to people. "How can such an understanding exist between two species? It seems more miraculous, more precious to me than any relationship among humans." Or, concerning the fact that garden gates often bear a sign "Beware of the dog", Grenier comments: "Never 'Beware of people,' though this may well be more apt."

It includes dog tales about other people and their dogs. "When Josephine married Bonaparte, she refused to kick a pug named Fortuné out of her bed. Fortuné was used to sleeping with her, so the general was forced to share the Creole beauty's bed with her dog." Then there was Madame Simone, who telephoned Grenier and told him, "My dog has died. You seem to know about these things. Could you tell me where I might get another?" Grenier then adds, "She was 95 at the time. What optimism! Perhaps she was right, since she lived to be 107 * * *."

There also are stories about dogs that Grenier owned, including Ulysses, a Saint-Germaine pointer who was a long-time companion in his adult years, and Dick, who was "the inseparable companion" of his youth in Pau, France. There is a chapter on Sarigue, a Belgian shepherd he bred to a "superb" German shepherd (which had once been Hermann Goering's) that Grenier then gave, still gravid, to Albert Camus, who then gave the dog to Jules Roy, who eventually gave it back to Grenier.

And lastly, THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING A DOG contains a "survey of men of letters who have spoken of dogs" and what they had to say. Among those men of letters are Homer, Rilke, Flaubert, Kafka, Faulkner, Turgenev, Kundera, Jack London, Raymond Queneau, and Virginia Woolf (a "woman of letters", to be precise).

THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING A DOG is a charming book. Ultimately, however, it was a little too much of a good thing, becoming mildly tiresome before I was three-quarters through it. Still, it should be appreciated by any dog-lover with a literary bent.
7 people found this helpful
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J. McFarland
5.0 out of 5 stars So Good It Made Me Roll Over
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2001
How many varieties of pleasure can a book offer a reader? Read this book and count your own delight in its wit, wisdom, emotional truth, sweetness, deviltry, beautiful writing and as many other rare qualities as you can find. Grenier, an editor at the venerable French publishing firm Editions Gallimard, writes hilariously and affectionately about his own dogs, foremost among them the noble Ulysses and the happily trampy Sarigue. He also ranges through world literature to recount with great Gallic charm the experiences and musings of many others who have similarly fallen under the canine spell. In one section, he notes, "Schopenhauer, the pessimist, wrote about the goodness of dogs: 'I would have no pleasure living in a world where dogs did not exist.' Depressed, and prey to phobias, he alternated portraits of dogs with portraits of great philosophers on the walls of his little apartment in Frankfurt." Page after page bristle with startling facts and opinions that combine this same complex mix of the erudite, idiosyncratic, insightful, affecting and zany. He also remarks in passing that, "Any bookstore will tell you that books about cats sell much better than books about dogs. Who's to say why?" This unique and entrancing book could well end up disproving Grenier's own statement.
24 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The best of two worlds
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2001
This delightful book is a treasure if you care about the two worlds of animals and literature. Pault Grenier has perfectly paid tribute to his deep love of dogs by presenting it wrapped in a wealth of literary wit and sharp writing.
If you can get through this book without a continual smile and a deeper emotional bond with your own dog, then you're a hard case indeed.
9 people found this helpful
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David Group
4.0 out of 5 stars contemplating canines
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2004
A collection of 43 brief ruminations about dogs from literature and philosophical works. This book is very-- for lack of a better word-- "French" (if you've ever read any 20th century French philosophy, you'll know what I mean), and is recommended primarily for those who love both dogs and fine literature.
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

P. W. Herron
4.0 out of 5 stars Dipping into literature with canine characters.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2009
Verified Purchase
This book is beautifully written and the translation also lovingly done. It contains several tales of Grenier's own life with his dog Ulysses. But above all this is an anthology of, or rather short extracts from, works of literature which tell stories that involve dogs. So if you are interested in knowing which great writers have canine characters in their works, this is the reference book for you. I really enjoyed it, and jotted down titles of books I wanted to get. One of the titles which gets a big mention is Virginia Woolf's "Flush". If you want a big anthology, go for "The Mammoth Book of Dogs", but this short book is a lovely read.
3 people found this helpful
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Nigel Marshall
2.0 out of 5 stars dreary dog vignettes
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2014
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Well I did learn that Napoleon couldn't' kick a pug out of Josephine's bed and that Schopenhauer opined "I would have no pleasure living in a World where dogs did not exist" as well as alternating his apartment with pictures of dogs and philosophers. For the most part however these are dreary vignettes that seem to assume that dogs are only of interest if associated with literary companions in name dropping anecdotes that do little to capture the intrinsic worth of the canine world.
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