John Steinbeck? Charley? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A U.S. novelist who won a Nobel Prize in Literature apparently once said that “dogs think humans are nuts”, and occasionally dogs display a look of “amazed contempt”. These thoughts have been attributed to John Steinbeck. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1960 John Steinbeck took a long road trip around the United States in a camper truck with a poodle named Charley. In 1962 he described his experiences in a book titled “Travels with Charley: In Search of America”. He made the following comparison between Charley and humans:1
He doesn’t belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself.
Steinbeck also made this remark about dogs in the same passage. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:
I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1988 the quotation appeared in “The Dog Lover’s Journal: An Illustrated Notebook with Quotes”:2
I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
—John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
American writer
In 2008 the quotation with an ascription to Steinbeck appeared in “Advanced Banter: The QI Book of Quotations” compiled by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson.3 The QI in the book title referred to the wonderful BBC television series “Quite Interesting” which is unrelated to this website.
In conclusion, John Steinbeck deserves credit for this quotation which appeared in his 1962 book “Travels with Charley: In Search of America”.
Image Notes: Picture of an inquisitive poodle from Fredrik Öhlander at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Jaconian whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Shortly after making the inquiry Jaconian discovered that the quotation had appeared in “Travels with Charley”.
- 1962, Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck, Quote Page 238, The Viking Press, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1988 Copyright, The Dog Lover’s Journal: An Illustrated Notebook with Quotes, Unnumbered Page, Running Press Book Publishers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2008 Copyright, Advanced Banter: The QI Book of Quotations by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, Series: A Quite Interesting Book, Section: Dogs, Quote Page 88, Faber and Faber: Bloomsbury House, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎