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The Life and Opinions Of Maf the Dog and Of His Friend Marilyn Monroe ohaganandrew 9780571215980 Books

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The Life and Opinions Of Maf the Dog and Of His Friend Marilyn Monroe ohaganandrew 9780571215980 Books

I bought this book in spite of the bad reviews it had gotten here because I listened to an interview with the author and thought I would enjoy the style. I can only handle a few pages at a time. In fact, I have read War & Peace and several other books while trying to trudge through Maf the Dog. The author is eloquent and his writing style is clever, but I just get bogged down in Maf's philosophy of the world as he goes on and on and on. Marilyn Monroe is just a peripheral character in this book, someone to take Maf to parties and classes. I should have paid more attention to the reviews here. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.


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The Life and Opinions Of Maf the Dog and Of His Friend Marilyn Monroe ohaganandrew 9780571215980 Books Reviews

It's what the dog saw, or supposedly.
a fun read
An interesting conceit from O'Hagan, who shows off his knowledge of Bloomsbury, Virginia Woolf's "Flush," Virginia's sister Vanessa and her sad story, and much, much more through the mouth of Marilyn Monroe's loquacious pup. As other readers have commented, Maf cleverly nails Sinatra, Natalie Wood and her mom, the Actors Studio, and Monroe's two psychiatrists who probably did her more harm than good. Eventually the copious, frequently irrelevant footnotes began to bore me and I began racing toward the end, where I saw to my surprise that O'Hagan had deliberately avoided dealing head-on with MM's associations with President John F. Kennedy and bro Bobby.

Why is that, I wondered. O'Hagan must have tried. I guess those pages just didn't work, so he gave up on them. A pity. The omission was too glaring for me to overlook, and at that point in my reading I began to get grumpy.

Grumpy conclusion Marilyn Monroe herself is sketched too thinly. O'Hagan presents an opaque portrait of a troubled woman with beautiful skin who is seldom without a glass of champagne in her hand. And the dog talks too much.
I had heard great things about this fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe's dog, so I had great expectations for it. It's all right, but I'm not finding it engrossing. It's not something I can't put down. I guess I was expecting kind of a funny, "fluff" piece of literature. Instead, it's wordy and philosophical. I got it on , and I can't say enough good things about that. What a marvelous invention!
This book needs a companion book or web site. There are so many philosophers, authors, actors, and historical characters mentioned, that it is hard to keep score and to keep everyone straight. Even though this is supposedly a novel, an index would help. I wish I had read the book and taken notes before I took my first college philosophy course. It would have helped me understand the philosophy better. But then again, so would an encyclopedia of philosophers and their theories.
Maf's favorite philosopher is Leon Trotsky. I would have expected Jeremy Bentham, the first writer to acknowledge that animals have rights, but Bentham barely gets two lines. Trotsky gets a whole chapter as ,af visits his home.
Don't expect this to read like a novel. The plot is a loosely organized quest. The story is really a series of essays on life.
Film fans need to be warned that Monroe's sole purpose in this novel is to carry Maf from one place to the next and to introduce him to people who are often much more interesting than she is like the couple who take Maf to view UFO's or Mrs. Murray who takes Maf to Trotsky's home in Mexico. Many characters are described as interior decorators, though that is not their professions. Maf is interested in the interior design of the soul and the intellect. The author uses this as a metaphor.
Marilyn meets and discusses politics with JFK, but these meeting is brief. Their legendary affair never happened. They met only two times, spent perhaps an hour together and were surrounded by well-wishers including secret service agents for the entire time. The author includes these meeting probably just because it was expected. I did like Marilyn and JFK discussing Martin Luther King Jr. Less interesting was Carson McCullers and Marilyn discussing Truman Capote.
The author did do his research and this is an interesting way to write essays and fiction at the same time. I know this book won't work for all readers, but I enjoyed the philosophy class. The author using Maf as a narrator also comments on famous dogs in history, literature and film. Maf makes a great teacher. I hope to see him in other novels or discussions or essays. Whatever the author thinks will work best.
Don't be put off if you find the title slightly cutesy - this is an exhilarating, idiosyncratic and very funny odyssey through 50's - 60's American. pop and intellectual culture. Andrew O'Hagan breathes new life into the ancient literary and folk tradition of the "talking animals" tale.
A cute premise that doesn't really work. Takes itself a little to seriously.
I bought this book in spite of the bad reviews it had gotten here because I listened to an interview with the author and thought I would enjoy the style. I can only handle a few pages at a time. In fact, I have read War & Peace and several other books while trying to trudge through Maf the Dog. The author is eloquent and his writing style is clever, but I just get bogged down in Maf's philosophy of the world as he goes on and on and on. Marilyn Monroe is just a peripheral character in this book, someone to take Maf to parties and classes. I should have paid more attention to the reviews here. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.