File under “Toby, or Not Toby”: The dog did not eat your homework.
OK, OK, it’s a stretch to include this entry in a book of English misconceptions, but cut me some slack by assuming that the above- mentioned dog did not eat your English homework.
The classic “My dog ate my homework” excuse has actually worked in the real world but twice. Once was when you were late for your book report about Steinbeck’s novelette Of Mice and Men. The other was when you wrote the novelette Of Mice and Men, and I’m talking about you, Mr. Steinbeck.
John Steinbeck’s first title for that particular classic was Something That Happened. Little did Steinbeck know. You see, there is a tale that Steinbeck’s dog ate his (Steinbeck’s, not the dog’s) manuscript of Of Mice and Men before he was to have submitted it to his editor. The tale is probably only partially right. Toby— not mouse and man’s best friend, I dare say—was the pet that tore apart Steinbeck’s manuscript in what might be the most
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
20J
prominent example of what happens when a dog chases and catches its tale. Whether actual eating of Steinbeck’s words was involved depends on how literally you take Steinbeck’s postdestruction comments. “Two months’ work to do over,” Steinbeck wrote. “There was no other draft. I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn’t want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I’m not sure is good at all. . . . I’m not sure [that] Toby didn’t know what he was doing when he ate the first draft. I have promoted Toby-dog to be lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature.”
The main point of astonishment in this tale isn’t in canine literary tastes. It lies in the fact that Steinbeck rewrote Of Mice and Men in two months (all emphasis intended). It took me longer to write this entry.
Now, remember that the book’s eventual title was inspired by lines in the Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse”: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/ gang aft agley.”
In this case, “The best laid schemes o’ Stein an’ Beck, gags arfed To-by,” indeed.