I'm trying to read The Call of the Wild but the neighbor's dog keeps barking. I can just glimpse him through the window, pacing around his enclosure.

Rowrr. Rowff. Rowff!

What's his problem? If it was fifty degrees below zero and he was being whipped along a frozen Yukon trail for forty miles a day, then he'd have reason to bark.

I could forgive him disturbing me if he was being asked to pull a 1,000 pound sled, or had to fight like two hells to survive. Most of his enclosure is hidden by bushes but I don't think the bottom of the trail is about to drop out in there.

If he could read The Call of the Wild he'd realize how lucky he is. Maybe like the dog in the novel he's angling to become the fabled ghost dog of Indian legend.

Rowffrouffrouffroufff. rowwwrrrrrrrrrrr. ROWFFF!!

I'm about ready to help him on his way.

Does that seem harsh? Merely because I suspect Jack London might have something more interesting to say than "Rowf Rowf" if only I were allowed to read him?

I am only agreeing with Arthur Schopenhauer who wrote, "I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity, and may therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it. ... Noise is a torture to all intellectual people. The superabundant display of vitality which takes the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling things about, has proved a daily torment to me all my life long."

Nothing allows us to put things in perspective like great literature.