Sheltering: Jennifer Finney Boylan on Boyhood, Dogs, and Unconditional Love
On this episode of Sheltering, Jennifer Finney Boylan speaks with Maris Kreizman about her new memoir, Good Boy, the story of Jennifer’s boyhood and early manhood, accompanied by the seven dogs that were in her life. Boylan tells us about being in quarantine with five members of her nuclear and extended family, about “coming around to pugs,” and what she misses about book tour. Her favorite local bookstore is Print: A Bookstore. Please order Good Boy through their website, or through Bookshop.
From the episode:
Maris Kreizman: You’re right, we like to think that dogs offer us unconditional love, because that is clearly wrong, my dog is always plotting to get something from me…
Jennifer Finney Boylan: What’s unconditional is the love that we have for them. When writing about men and boys, for many men and boys, love is a hard thing to express, but not necessarily so when it comes to dogs. My father, who I wouldn’t call stern, but reserved at times, had no such reserve when it came to expressing his love for some of our dogs, including our truly questionable dogs.
We had one called Playboy, and [my dad] would get down on the floor and roll around with Playboy. The one time I ever saw him cry, we were watching a TV show with a bloodhound who died, and I remember looking over at him and he was just sobbing. Which you know, when you’re a kid seeing that, at least for me, it was really eye opening. And he just looked over at me and said, you know, it’s sad.
