Hence, this pitiful plea for someone to throw them a bone from time to time and actually answer their tweets once in a great while. This would be similar to begging a lover to return one’s unsolicited lover letters back in the day. A sorrowful sight it always was to see anyone plunge deeper and deeper into the throes of unrequited love, be them the giver or the receiver.
Anyways, back to the act of throwing bones. This phrase is inspired by the commonplace scene of a dog owner feeding the pet a piece of bone. Not much meat on the bone but to the hungry dog, the bone is quite something to relish and chew over.
Not much meat, hm. Poor thing. The dog owner is pretty mean but that is not the point of discussion here. The point of discuss here is, metaphorically speaking, he who throws a bone is still seen as doting on the dog, even though a meatless bone is not much to speak, or eat off, of. The thrower is still giving out much needed support and encouragement of sorts.
The receiver of the bone, on the other hand, is grateful. He is so desperate and deep in need of help that he cannot afford to mind the manner in which such small generosities are given out. Or as the Irish say, beggars can’t be choosers. F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, ended his short story The Crack-Up (originally published in Esquire, April 1936), with:
I shall manage to live with the new dispensation, though it has taken some months to be certain of the fact. And just as the laughing stoicism which has enabled the American Negro to endure the intolerable conditions of his existence has cost him his sense of the truth -- so in my case there is a price to pay. I do not any longer like the postman, nor the grocer, nor the editor, nor the cousin’s husband, and he in turn will come to dislike me, so that life will never be very pleasant again, and the sign Cave Canem is hung permanently just above my door. I will try to be a correct animal though, and if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand.
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