2007 books
33) Thomas Mann, Bashan and I, 1919
Having recently 'owned' and been best mates with a samoyed named Jake, I'm all too aware that dogs have emotional and complex personalities that we are often too rushed to acknowledge. I want to start exploring this theme further in memoirs and fiction (I'll also mention here that Benji reads nothing but memoirs on dogs, in Thai). So before I inevitably get around to reading John Grogan's Marley and Me I thought I'd do well by checking out a much earlier memoir by this Nobel Laureate. Unfortunately Mann has very little to say that provides much of an insight into the inner life of his dog Bashan (almost in denial of how the book was sold to me by it's glowing blurb), Mann being more concerned with his own foibles and how Bashan fits in around his own idiosyncracies and behaviour and, remembering occasionally that he also has readers to inform, his own literary erudition - yes, it's a translated edition from 1923, but still a rather stuffy one. We learn little enough about Bashan such that I think Mann failed to do his loyal and devoted subject any justice at all, at least by modern expectations. A poor start, but I'll keep looking.