the frustration of life

Patrick White, The Solid Mandala, p. 187:

Some years later, when they got them, he hated Arthur's dogs--though technically one of them was his own. If anyone, thinking of his good, had been interested enough to accuse Waldo Brown of neglecting his responsibilities to his fellow men, nobody could have accused the dogs of neglecting theirs: in being, in reminding at least one of their owners of the exasperation, the frustration of life, in farting and shitting under his nose, in setting beneath his feet traps of elastic flesh and electric fur, to say nothing of iron jaws, in chewing up bank notes, and far more precious, the sheets of thoughts which escaped from his mind--lost for ever. So the whole purpose of the dogs, together with Arthur, seemed to be to remind, to constantly to remind.