Sewell Chan writes in City Room, the New York Times’s Metro blog:

“May I say, I’ve never known such a well-behaved group of dogs at a literary reading,” Adam Gopnik, the author and New Yorker writer, said this afternoon after the novelist Cathleen Schine read from her latest book, “The New Yorkers.” Ms. Schine’s audience was unusual: about 80 humans and about half as many dogs, who had gathered in the courtyard of the Museum of the City of New York. There were a few yelps, barks and howls, but otherwise the audience was rather subdued.
…
Mr. Gopnik, who has written about his children’s experiences in Paris and New York, compared the outlook of dogs and children. “For dogs and for children, New York is their nature, not their culture,” he said, adding: “The improbability, the impossibility of New York is never something that strikes dogs or children. To them it is simply the jungle, the forest where they live.” Cont’d.

It’s an odd coincidence in a month of odd coincidences: just yesterday, I found my copy of Schine’s terrific novel The Evolution of Jane in a box of books, and set it aside to mail to my dear young cousin Jane, herself an exceptionally evolved creature. I interviewed Schine (who is, as you surely know, the former wife of David Denby) when Evolution came out, and she was a lot of fun to talk to. Someday I’ll have more of my clips up, but it will require quite a bit of scanning stamina.