Read Online The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan - Free Book Online

gentleman are coming to the capital as my guests. You dig? Otherwise they can forget the show. I’ll do a Farewell Gala for Adlai Stevenson. I’ll do a fucking roast for Richard Nixon. You tell them. You tell Ted Sorensen I’m out. I’m done.’
‘Please Frank. Jack knows . . .’
‘Don’t give me what Jack knows! I’m about to leave for New York to do more work for Jack Knows.’
Tom and Jerry used to be called Jasper and Jinx. The cat had the mouse by the tail and was trying to make him run over the Welcome mat into his mouth.
‘I will sort it out, Frank. Honest.’
‘Today, Peter. I want it fixed today.’
The black housekeeper came in with a broom and a big ol’ Southern voice, a big fat lady with orange stockings and blue slippers. She shouted, ‘Jasper! Jasper!’
‘There are big things to be done, Frank. I’m sorry about any confusion. Dr King’s lobby is on their tail and Jack’s special assistant Woodruff is kicking up. Jack’s just trying to keep everything on the down-low, with the segregation issue pressing in and the right-wing columnists . . .’
You never saw the black lady’s face. Never. The respect for social realism at MGM meant you never saw the face of a domestic servant in a cartoon presentation. Yes, ma’am. And here was the faceless lady coming down the stairs shouting at poor Jasper for breaking up the house. ‘Wait just a minute you goodfor-nothing cheap fur coat. One more breakings and you is out. O-W-T out!’
‘Well, Slim. Just you remember that some of us have been pushing for change just as long as brother-in-law over there has been pushing for office.’
‘Yes, Frank.’
‘And we’ve paid a price for it. The world has changed but we’ve paid a price.’
‘Indeed. I know that.’
‘You get that?’
‘I got it, Frank.’
‘You get it?’
‘Certainly I do.’
And the clever mouse tricks the cat and makes him break up the house all over again. The housekeeper comes down the stairs and she’s still got no face, no history, and that big Southern voice coming at you with her broom and her good sense about the house. ‘When I says out I means out!’ The door is flung open and out goes the cat. The mouse is happy with the world.
    * Born Hans Detlef Sierck, the director is known for a certain goodness of bad taste. At the time of their release, his films were hated by the critics for seeming too unreal; later, they were loved for being so ironic. Despite my difficulty with some of his colours, I always felt he was a master of artistic charm.
    Mr Jacobs tied up the last of the suitcases and gave me some lunch in the kitchen before we all met at the limousine next to the fountain. I had to go into a little carrying case but I didn’t mind; somehow, Frank’s exhaustion had filtered through to me, and I just lay watching the palms disappear through a scrap of window as Frank’s voice grew silent. Winter sunshine was falling into the car, and I remember feeling the engines of puphood were beginning to push me in a whole new direction. Thomas Mann understood how strange it is for a dog to watch everything and say nothing and to live a life of wan good nature, worn out with resting. The German pointer Bashan used to lie beside Mann, the blood-heat of his body pleasing the master and making him feel less lonely. ‘A pervasive feeling of sympathy and good cheer invariably comes over me when I’m in his company and looking at things from the dog’s angle,’ Mann wrote in the middle of his life. As we drove onto the freeway I re called the story of Theodor Adorno, who pondered the liquid ation of the individual from a house in the glades of paradise, a house in Malibu that looked into the blue water of the Pacific Ocean. He may have been a creature of the war years, but his moment came with the 1960s, a decade that really began for all of us with the fading brightness of Marilyn.

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    he skies were friendly, or so they said. The sky was a place of rest for