Porkopolis

A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt —
A pig is a pal, who’ll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they’ve black balled, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they’ve turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You’ll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You’ll never go wrong with a pig!

Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)
U.S. author. Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

DEDICATED… to the millions of porkers who’ve gone to their final resting sites inside us, and to the ghosts of still billions more pigs who’ve long since passed away down the throat of time. I’d like to call them all by name, but the list is long and I cannot remember.

William B. Hedgepeth
U.S. author, columnist, editor and playwright. The Hog Book (1978), the author’s dedication.

Fluellen:
What call you the town’s name where Alexander the Pig was born?

Gower:
Alexander the Great.

Fluellen:
Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
English dramatist and poet. Henry V, Act 4, Scene 7. (c. 1599).

Pig is a beautiful word… The overwhelming conclusion is that pigs are pleasing. The earth would be poorer in so many ways without them.

Jack Denton Scott (b. 1918)
U.S. author. The Book of the Pig (1981).

The actual lines of a pig (I mean a really fat pig) are among the loveliest and most luxuriant in nature; the pig has the same great curves, swift yet heavy, which we see in rushing water or in a rolling cloud.

G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
British author, journalist and critic. The Uses of Diversity (1920).

The long perfect loveliness of sow.

Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)
U.S. poet. “Saint Francis And The Sow” from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980).

Whoever has looked into the eye of a shrewd old sow should feel humility. It is a bright clear eye, more like the eye of a human than the eye of an animal. It looks at you quite directly, even with what might be called a piercing gaze. The look sizes you up, appraises you.

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956)
U.S. author and scientific farmer at his Malabar Farm in Ohio. “A Hymn to Hawgs” in Animals and Other People (1944).

I became completely enamored of her. There were good vibrations. Her eyes are so human too, like a Kennedy’s.

Jamie Wyeth [James Browning Wyeth] (b. 1946)
U.S. painter, in describing Dun–Dun, the subject in his oil on canvas painting “Portrait of Pig” (1970).

The love of pigs is an inborn thing… I have always thought wallowing was a nice quality.

Sarah Bowman
Canadian author and teacher. Pigs, A Troughful of Treasures with Lucinda Vardley (1981).

The excellence of hogs is fatness; of men virtue.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
U.S. statesman, author, printer and scientist. Poor Richard’s Almanack (1736).

When Charlotte’s web said SOME PIG, Wilbur tried hard to look like some pig. When Charlotte’s web said TERRIFFIC, Wilbur had tried to look terrific. And now that the web said RADIANT, he did everything possible to make himself glow.

E.B. White (1899–1985)
U.S. essayist, author and authority on prose styles. Charlotte’s Web (1952).

I never had so much fun in my life as when I was in the field with that pig. He was a smart little rascal and anybody could see he was partial to me.

Larry Callen
U.S. children’s author. Pinch (1975).