Media: John Grogan Likes It Ruff

Marley & Me, a slim volume, is a big, fat Gordita of a book. It is easily devoured and utterly pleasurable. It is also sad, sad, sad, like a canine Love Story. What can you say about an 11-year-old dog who died? That he was cute, but bad. That he loved chewing, and drooling, and pulling on his leash. And me.

He sold the manuscript for $200,000. As of this writing, there are 1,070,000 copies in circulation. When his royalty check comes in April, publishing insiders estimate it will be close to $2 million. And he recently sold the movie rights to the producer of Dude, Where’s My Car? for, he told the Inquirer, “a substantial sum.” As of now, not much has changed in his life, although he’s thinking of taking a leave of absence from the column to work on his next book, a story about his youth and his relationship with his father. And he notes he’s switched from Yuengling to Heineken.

Back at the Great American Pub, Grogan takes a call from his editor, who tells him that Marley & Me will be moving up another notch on next week’s New York Times list.

“Who dropped? Did Friedman drop?”

Friedman dropped.

WHEN WALKER LUNDY reorganized the Inquirer newsroom, knocking out a political column, combining the foreign and national desks, and reappropriating staff to the suburbs, it was, he said, making the paper “more accessible” to readers there, where close to 68 percent of the readership lies. Those readers wanted more service, he said, and fun graphics. Less politics, and more stories about their Neighbors. They had, as Virginia Smith says, a “lifestyle” that needed to be catered to.

The Grogans know something about that lifestyle. Their home outside Emmaus is a warm and cozy two-level, with a two-car garage, a rec room containing a ping-pong table, and an adjacent “guy room,” complete with woodworking studio and “beer fridge.” On a weekday afternoon, the house is teeming with kids — their three, plus some extras. Gracie, their 18-month-old Lab, seems like more than one dog, running around in circles, jumping, barking. “And she’s the good one,” Grogan sighs, with the comic-­exasperated air of Wilbur in Mister Ed.

“Did Patrick do his homework?” his wife, Jenny Vogt, asks, coming in from picking up their daughter at elementary school. “I think so?” he says jokingly. She rolls her eyes. “Jenny wears the pants,” he says, just like Wilbur would.

Grogan doesn’t think ’50s sitcoms are analogous to his family life, but personally, that’s the only place I’ve ever heard a father give anything like the “Life is like a sailboat talk” that Grogan gave his son Patrick recently after Patrick brought home disappointing grades. A good sailor picks a clear destination on the far shore and sticks to it, Grogan wrote in a column about the episode. No matter what weather kicks up, what obstacles and detours arise, he doesn’t lose sight of his goal. And anyway, Grogan is wearing a cardigan.

“We’re just sort of a typical family,” he says. As he folds peacefully onto his leather couch, I think that this is why his colleagues and certain magazine writers see his Inquirer column as such a total eye-roller. A city columnist shouldn’t be typical: He should be someone you live vicariously through — someone who crashes parties and talks smack and passionately opposes the smoking ban, not someone who, like you, is sitting on a couch from (probably) Jennifer Convertibles, who doesn’t even know that $15 hamburgers hit Center City three years ago.