"outside of a dog"

[Mark Mandel]

I forwarded this (with Garson's link) to my wife, a retired librarian. She
replies:

Objects produced for sale by the American Library Association attribute the
> remark to Groucho Marx. I wouldn't mess with the ALA when it comes to
> citations.
>

Which may mean they know something we haven't come up with, or that they're
not immune to pop attribution, or that it doesn't matter to them in this
case.

Do any of the Groucho attributions offer checkable citations? By 1954
Groucho was sixty and his career was largely over. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx)

m a m

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Baker, John M. <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:

Google Books has an earlier example of this, in full text, from Boys' Life,
> p. 78 (Feb. 1954).  It's on the magazine's Think and Grin page, which
> appears to be a collection of jokes sent in by readers (though I don't see a
> specific invitation to readers to contribute).  The quip is in more or less
> the canonical form:
>
>     A book is man's best friend outside of a dog, and inside of a dog it's
> too dark to read.--_Jim Brewer, Cleveland, O._
>
> If, as I suppose, this was submitted by one of the magazine's juvenile
> readers (presumably Jim Brewer of Cleveland), then it is likely that he
> heard it elsewhere, rather than making it up.  Be that as it may, Boys' Life
> had a large circulation and is a plausible avenue for the phrase's initial
> popularization.
>
> John Baker
>
>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold Zwicky
>> Sent: Sun 6/13/2010 10:47 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: "outside of a dog"
>>
>> with citation of ADS-L, at the end of this posting on my blog:
>>
>> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/the-commencement-pun-crop/
>>
>>
>>

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