The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan Page B
Authors: Andrew O’Hagan
Tags: Biographical, Fiction, Literary, General, Performing Arts, Pets, Contemporary Women, Dogs, Film & Video
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was coming from her turntable, the sound escaping with a bar of light at the foot of her bedroom door.
* This was the era of valiant smoking. People smoked: that’s what they did. Like Sammy, many of them used a Lucky Strike as if it were a baton, conducting the symphony of their own coolness. I have a few small talents, but I always regretted not being able to smoke or stick out my tongue at passing enemies.
* A dog is bound to like footnotes. We spend our lives down here. And in a sense, all literature is a footnote. Djali, for instance, Emma Bovary’s dog, was a footnote to Esmeralda’s little goat in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris , also called Djali.
7
O
ne Easter Sunday they brought out the dogs in Alabama. I’m talking about a couple of years after the time I was in New York with Marilyn. It’s not part of our adventures, but I want to mention it here. They brought out the dogs and they brought out the fire-hoses and they turned them on the people who asked for freedom. The dogs were barking and the people were scared of being bitten but just as scared of their own anger. I’m talking about the kind of anger that can wreck a person’s life. The thing in Alabama was a terrible mix-up because, Holy Lord, I saw the dogs on TV pulling on their leashes and weeping for shame as Bull Connor’s men dragged them in to oppose the black people. Trotsky said insurrection is an art with its own laws, but at Birmingham the laws were horribly corrupted: the dogs found themselves acting the part of slaves set on slaves. Only humans could fashion something so profoundly inhuman. The dogs were adding their sound to the voice of democracy, singing Freedom Land with the freshness of Betty Mae Fikes. ‘Walk,’ they barked, ‘Walk, Walk, Walk out of Slavery.’
Anyone with experience knows how life can turn our instincts against us. I saw that back when I was young, a while before Alabama, when I was still with Marilyn. I often think of civil rights when I think of New York that spring, because there was a pulsation on the streets and at the lunch counters, in the parks and in the bus stations, a sense that the times were equal to a change of some kind. One morning, we walked twenty blocks in the sunshine. A black man with a harmonica was sitting on a fire hydrant at the corner of 77th and Madison. At the other end of my leash, Marilyn was wearing a black wig and dark glasses; a Hermès scarf encased her head in clouds of blue and gold. We stopped and she made to open her purse, but the man dismissed her. ‘Save yo’ money while you can,’ he said. Then he sang a snatch of song. ‘Your Dog Loves My Dog’. *
The Castelli Gallery was situated in a dark townhouse. Marilyn wanted to spend an hour looking at some new pictures: we’d heard a lot about the artist, this thirty-seven-year-old jazz fan called Roy Lichtenstein. As soon as we entered, Mr Castelli came over and kissed Marilyn’s hand. He had a very Italian willingness to be charming and I could see, from my level, that he had put a lot of thought into his shoes, a pair of velvet slippers that still blushed with the cobbler’s pride. Curious: there was black and white tiling on the floor and Mr Castelli only walked on the white tiles. I wondered if that was Masonic or something. In any event I took up residence on one of the black ones and watched with pleasure as the impresario talked to his famous guest about the wonderful new work. Not since Duncan Grant had I heard anyone be so eloquent about the transitoriness of beauty. Unlike Duncan, though, and unlike Vanessa Bell or the critics, who always talked about meanings, Mr Castelli mainly enjoyed pointing out that the paintings in his gallery had no meaning at all. They were meaningless. ‘It is an optical experience. Humour is the only acknowledgement possible.’
* Marilyn pulled me away too quickly. I wanted to say something to the man about Lincoln’s dog, Fido. He was a freedom-loving animal, a golden
* This was the era of valiant smoking. People smoked: that’s what they did. Like Sammy, many of them used a Lucky Strike as if it were a baton, conducting the symphony of their own coolness. I have a few small talents, but I always regretted not being able to smoke or stick out my tongue at passing enemies.
* A dog is bound to like footnotes. We spend our lives down here. And in a sense, all literature is a footnote. Djali, for instance, Emma Bovary’s dog, was a footnote to Esmeralda’s little goat in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris , also called Djali.
7
O
ne Easter Sunday they brought out the dogs in Alabama. I’m talking about a couple of years after the time I was in New York with Marilyn. It’s not part of our adventures, but I want to mention it here. They brought out the dogs and they brought out the fire-hoses and they turned them on the people who asked for freedom. The dogs were barking and the people were scared of being bitten but just as scared of their own anger. I’m talking about the kind of anger that can wreck a person’s life. The thing in Alabama was a terrible mix-up because, Holy Lord, I saw the dogs on TV pulling on their leashes and weeping for shame as Bull Connor’s men dragged them in to oppose the black people. Trotsky said insurrection is an art with its own laws, but at Birmingham the laws were horribly corrupted: the dogs found themselves acting the part of slaves set on slaves. Only humans could fashion something so profoundly inhuman. The dogs were adding their sound to the voice of democracy, singing Freedom Land with the freshness of Betty Mae Fikes. ‘Walk,’ they barked, ‘Walk, Walk, Walk out of Slavery.’
Anyone with experience knows how life can turn our instincts against us. I saw that back when I was young, a while before Alabama, when I was still with Marilyn. I often think of civil rights when I think of New York that spring, because there was a pulsation on the streets and at the lunch counters, in the parks and in the bus stations, a sense that the times were equal to a change of some kind. One morning, we walked twenty blocks in the sunshine. A black man with a harmonica was sitting on a fire hydrant at the corner of 77th and Madison. At the other end of my leash, Marilyn was wearing a black wig and dark glasses; a Hermès scarf encased her head in clouds of blue and gold. We stopped and she made to open her purse, but the man dismissed her. ‘Save yo’ money while you can,’ he said. Then he sang a snatch of song. ‘Your Dog Loves My Dog’. *
The Castelli Gallery was situated in a dark townhouse. Marilyn wanted to spend an hour looking at some new pictures: we’d heard a lot about the artist, this thirty-seven-year-old jazz fan called Roy Lichtenstein. As soon as we entered, Mr Castelli came over and kissed Marilyn’s hand. He had a very Italian willingness to be charming and I could see, from my level, that he had put a lot of thought into his shoes, a pair of velvet slippers that still blushed with the cobbler’s pride. Curious: there was black and white tiling on the floor and Mr Castelli only walked on the white tiles. I wondered if that was Masonic or something. In any event I took up residence on one of the black ones and watched with pleasure as the impresario talked to his famous guest about the wonderful new work. Not since Duncan Grant had I heard anyone be so eloquent about the transitoriness of beauty. Unlike Duncan, though, and unlike Vanessa Bell or the critics, who always talked about meanings, Mr Castelli mainly enjoyed pointing out that the paintings in his gallery had no meaning at all. They were meaningless. ‘It is an optical experience. Humour is the only acknowledgement possible.’
* Marilyn pulled me away too quickly. I wanted to say something to the man about Lincoln’s dog, Fido. He was a freedom-loving animal, a golden
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