MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats: Recent Episodes
The Meow Library
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
Sally Rooney's Intermezzo is available here.
Over and over, Rooney’s characters put their faith in love as a means of escape from the conventional roles assigned to them by society and by each other; no sooner have they achieved this than they are rudely confronted with inequalities of wealth, status and power that are clearly fatal to their idealism — but not to love itself. I take this to be the modest provocation of Rooney’s novels: the idea that love is real precisely because it is a product,one created by social conventions, by market forces, by systems of violence and, behind all of this, by human beings themselves. This is not, I admit, a Marxist theory of love. It is something more unexpected: a lover’s theory of Marxism.
-- Andrea Long Chu for Vulture
While much has been written in praise of Sally Rooney's frank Millenial realism, its Marxist underpinnings are only beginning to be explored. Theory, as ever, can only be thinly illustrative of the market forces propelling Rooney's work into the academic and popular spotlight. The Meow Library believes that the magnitude of Intermezzo's impact can only be understood through praxis, so our analysis takes the form of thousands of undifferentiated "meows," thereby converting it, like Rooney's subversions-as-Harlequin-Romance, into an eminently viral force with potential to destabilize and transform its very means of propagation: a force as great as Love itself, if not greater.
Meow: A Literary Podcast for Cats is supported by sales of Meow: A Novel and other Meow Library titles.
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
Matthew Davis's Let Me Try Again can be purchased here.
Matthew Davis's Let Me Try Again is a hilarious, deeply human look Gen Z's calamitous superego. It opens on a suicidal fantasy, quickly giving way to a dense and dizzying edifice of self-recrimination — centered, in true Zoomer fashion, on the singular, cosmic theme of much “alt-lit” — a twentysomething breakup. But this time, it’s done with class.
Davis’s dire, uproarious idiom evokes an atmosphere of mortifying regret (the very quiddity of Zoomer being), riding the inexorable crests and valleys of the on-again, off-again “situationship” to Oblivion and back. And somehow, he makes sure you enjoy every second of it.
There exists no better analog to the book's central refrain than the fraught, tenuous, but always rewarding bond between human and cat, so we will now meow at you for 30 minutes, giving you time to think about all you’ve loved and lost, drop the pathos, and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Sales of Meow: A Novel help fund The Meow Library's continuing research into the art and science of meowing.
Matthew Davis's Let Me Try Again is available through Amazon and wherever books are sold.
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
Caroline Calloway's Scammer can be purchased here.
Known as the original social media provocateur, Caroline Calloway has spun a staggering media empire from her controversial Instagram presence. Praised and reviled in equal measure, her long-awaited Scammer belongs to the emerging canon of the "Paper Internet" -- reifications of Internet fame, printed, bound, and re-ingested into cyberspace in the form of "BookTok" content. What is it, exactly, that makes a physical book like Scammer resonate so well with the algorithm? While accusations of uncredited ghostwriting promulgated by her former friend and collaborator, Natalie Beach, have helped propel Scammer to infamy, The Meow Library's team of forensic linguists have detected an unmistakably feline rhythm to the book's opening chapters, leading us to question whether Calloway's cat, Matisse, may have imparted the intrinsic virality of cat-language to Scammer's pages. After nearly a year of analysis, we are presenting the book's first twenty pages in feline translation. Could Scammer's singular tone and self-published success be attributed to an invisible paw? Listen and judge for yourselves.
Closing comments supplied by BBC presenter Emma Millen's cat, Delia.
Meow: A Literary Podcast For Cats is supported by sales of our debut cat-language tome, Meow: A Novel.
Visit Caroline Calloway's Bookstagram here.
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
Gabi Abrão's Notes on Shapeshifting can be purchased here.
In a meditation class in high school, our teacher told us to pick our place. This teacher, who did past life regression on dogs and had created a secret holistic elective under the guise of what she told her superiors would be a course on "the history of alternative medicine," said to us, "Pick a place to be in. Just sit there and listen. Make room for visits from animals, insects, spirits."
- Gabi Abrão, Notes on Shapeshifting
This is the place to be in. Take a deep breath, and make room for a visit from a cat.
In this week's podcast, The Meow Library has translated passages from Gabi Abrão's bestselling poetry collection into cat language. After noticing that cats seemed inexorably drawn to copies of the book (a phenomenon experimentally verified by Abrão via a Discord post), we solicited field recordings of their vocalizations and assembled them, with the help of a professional narrator, into this 30-minute compendium of feline resonances found within the text.
For more, visit Gabi and The Meow Library on Instagram:
Gabi Abrão: @sighswoon
The Meow Library: @meowliterature
Today's podcast covers Stranger Things actress-turned-literary wunderkind Millie Bobby Brown's breathtakingly ghostwritten Nineteen Steps, which is being unfairly panned as an exploitative, juvenile cash-in. Find out why it's anything but in this eloquent, 3000-word apologia, ghostwritten by my cat.
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library: https://meowlibrary.com
This exclusive interview is a presentation of The Meow Library.
“. . .but in any case the selfimmolatory tendencies of cats does seem to be a known factor in the feline equation. Noted in the writings of Asclepius, among others of the ancients.
Jesus, said Seals.
It would seem to contradict Unamuno, though. Right, Squire? His dictum that cats reason more than they weep? Of course, their very existence according to Rilke is wholly hypothetical.
Cats?
Cats.”
-- Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger
In the low-hanging twilight, when the horizon was stained with an eerie hue of ashen gray, the splay-legged tabby known as Cormac McCarthy took his final faltering steps. His once agile frame, now burdened by the relentless passage of time, moved with a solemnity of ancient timbers. Shadows danced upon his frail silhouette, elongating the lines of age etched beneath his mange-stricken eyes, gray and pink underskin like the cracked parchments of forgotten manuscripts.
Those sooted emeralds, once fierce and piercing, now glimmered with a dim light, as if struggling to maintain their brilliance against the encroaching darkness. The fire of life within them whispered its last plea, a desperate attempt to hold onto a world that had grown weary and desolate.
Cormac, a creature forged in a realm of solitude and quiet contemplation, traversed the dire sands of his own existence, each step a measured cadence resonating with the weight of countless untold tales and unfulfilled desires. The very air seemed to hang heavy, laden with the mournful sighs of countless souls who had passed before him.
As he made his way to a secluded alcove, sheltered from the merciless winds that whispered their cruel laments, the shrill of absence enfolded him. The rasp of flame-kissed straw and the distant echo of a howling wind played their melancholy symphony, accompanying Cormac on his final pilgrimage.
In that sacred space, amidst the fading light, Cormac lay his weary body upon the cool earth. The world around him hushed, as if nature herself held her breath in reverence for this solemn departure. The final rays of the sun caressed his fur, painting him in a gentle golden hue, a testament to the untamed spirit that once roamed these lands.
The silence deepened, the stillness grew, as Cormac's heart, that delicate metronome of life, stuttered and sputtered. His ragged breaths purred their final tale, dissipating into the vast expanse of eternity. And in that quietude, the soul of a nomadic philosopher, a wanderer of realms unseen, was unshackled from its earthly vessel.
The world mourned its loss, though it knew not of the passing. No grand elegy would be written, no chorus of mourners would sing in lament. But in the hearts of those who had known him, who had witnessed the enigmatic dance of his existence, a void was left. A void that could only be filled by the echoes of his meows, the faint whispers of his stories, forever woven into the fabric of time.
Thus, Cormac McCarthy, the feline sage who prowled the alleys of our mortal coil, departed from this realm, transcending the boundaries of flesh and bone. His tale, now complete, would forever linger in the forgotten corners of the human heart, a testament to the enduring power of a single, idiot life.
Cormac McCarthy was my cat, and these are his final words.
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/meowliterature/support
This podcast is sponsored by Sam Austen's Meow Library.
On May 1st, the Writers Guild of America commenced a strike, suspending production on several films and television shows. With the entertainment industry already in crisis, this strike speaks to the urgency of the matter at hand -- namely, the rights of individual authors in a fast-evolving media landscape where concepts such as syndication and residual payments are all but irrelevant. Worse, with the major studios and streaming networks posting quarter after quarter of dire earnings statements, the replacement of human writers by technologies such as ChatGPT may be imminent as producers struggle to recover their bottom lines.
In this episode, we speak with Hollywood insider Sam Austen, whose use of non-union labor in the creation of several hit media franchises has proven controversial, but difficult to legislate, as he relies entirely upon stray cats to write, act in, and produce his impressive portfolio of series, films, and books. Here, he speculates about a possible future where, after winning legal protection against AI's encroachment on their turf, writers will have to rise up against a far more resilient foe -- the common housecat.
Sam Austen's Meow: A Novel - written entirely by cats - is fast becoming a bestseller, and is available on Amazon.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/meowliterature/support
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
Today, we present your cat with selections from Norman Mailer's "Truth and Being: Nothing and Time," first collected in The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer (1967). Many consider this to be his finest (e)sc(h)atological work.
An English-language transcript follows:
[It] was left for me to return to the rootless disordered mind of our Twentieth Century to the kiss sub cauda and the Weltanschauung of the Medieval witch. The kiss sub cauda: if I had not come to recognize over the years of my career that nobility of form and aristocracy of manner are the last hope of man, I would not explain that sub cauda means beneath the tail, the hole in the highness of the cat, the place the witch would kiss when out she voyaged to visit the Demon (or is it in?), cats being classified by Medieval logic as the trinity of the Devil shaped into One.
It is characteristic of revolutionaries, passionate lovers, the very ambitious, the greedy, the stingy, and dogs, to fix on what is excreted by others; it is typical of Narcissists, children, nuns, spinsters, misers, bankers, conservative statesmen, dictators, compulsive talkers, bores, and World War I generals accomplished at trench warfare, to be forever sniffing their own. But the intelligent and conservative among you are annoyed already for there is a tendency to my remarks which you detect with unease, you fear I lead the argument into the alp of the high immoral. I do; but perhaps my aim is to rescue morality....
We are drawn to shit because we are imperfect in our uses of the good. If all we eliminated was noxious, hopeless, used-up or never-intended, it would be a pervert or maniac who found the subject attractive. But not all of what we give away is useless.... Each cell in each existence labors like all life to make the most of what it is or can be, each cell is different, perhaps even so different as one of us from another. So perhaps we do not digest all that is good for us....
The dung of the brave is filled with riches for the fearful: precisely those subtleties, reservations, and cautions the courageous dislike are grace and wit for the coward; the offal of the fool has sweets to accelerate a genius -- a dull mind must reject those goods for fear the head would hemorrhage from unexpected and indisposbale enthusiasms....
But if excrement is the enforced marriage of Tragic Beauty and Filth, why then did God desert it, and leave our hole to the Devil, unless it is because God has hegemony over us only as we create each other. God owns the creation, but the Devil has power over all the waste -- how natural for him to lay siege where the body ends and the weak tragic air begins. Out of the asshole pour the riches of Satan -- these souls of nutrient, these lost cells spurned by the universe of the body they traversed, their being about to be cast into the lower existence of Chance....
Only Chance prospered in the Twentieth Century.... The progression was from man to merde, the Twentieth Century was a rush of all souls to search out shit, to kiss the Devil, to rescue a molecule from the brown of its extinction. For think: we began with the kiss sub cauda, the kiss to the hole of the cat. The cat -- that marriage of grace and cruelty, self-centered, alien, alone, what can the cat use in its food of tender cells, compassionate meats, philosophical greens? It cannot -- the drop of the cat is rich in royal and generous affections; one only has to absorb, and one will love with grace.
Bid us farewell, now, with a final kiss sub cauda.
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meowliterature/support
This podcast is a production of The Meow Library.
Last week, Puffin, an imprint of Penguin Books, announced the release of ‘updated’ editions of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s stories, featuring a slew of questionable alterations to the original text, ostensibly attuned to modern sensibilities, but baffling - if not downright insulting - to casual readers and hardcore Dahl fans alike.
More troubling on the censorship front is last year’s preemptive cancellation of Alberto Gullaba Jr.’s University Thugs, a hotly anticipated debut nixed in the cradle over, of all things, the author’s Filipino heritage, deemed insufficiently ‘other’ to handle characters of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, per a revolving door of ‘sensitivity readers’ brought in to enhance the manuscript’s ‘authenticity.’
These two cases point toward the general tone-deafness and neuroticism of contemporary publishing (historically, and at present, run by a who's-who of society's elite); willing to deny promising minority voices a forum, and Bowdlerize its own questionable past, in a sort of Freudian reaction-formation against the forces that gave them such authority.
In this week’s episode, The Meow Library offers you a glimpse into our proposed solution to this rising tide of literary suppression. By replacing every word ever written - or podcasted - with the ontological nullity of ‘Meow,’ we aim to create a robust, censorship-resistant, and truly inclusive literature, one that will endure the vagaries of fashion and stand testament to what we - human, feline, and everything in between - had in us to express, for all eternity.
University Thugs has been published by the author and is available on Amazon.
"Against the Written Word is the most important, most revolutionary book produced since the advent of the printing press; the book that will liberate readers from reading, writers from writing, and booksellers from peddling their despicable wares."
- Ian F. Svenonius, Press Kit, Against the Written Word
"We can say nothing about nothing. This is why the number of books can't be limited. All the bodies together, all the minds together, and all their output are not worth the least expression of charity."
- Jean-Luc Godard, Dans le noir du temps
"Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow. Meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow, meow meow. Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow, meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow meow meow meow meow? Meow."
- Sam Austen, Meow: A Novel
Today we discuss the work of three (anti)literary icon(oclast)s -- Marxist-Leninist rocker-cum-manifestist Ian F. Svenonius, filmmaker and theorist Jean-Luc Godard, and dissident linguist Sam Austen -- whose output stands as an edifice against itself, a fulgurating peripety of nonmeaning, encapsulated here as a string of hollow MEOWs, addressed to no one, signifying nothing.
MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats is a production of The Meow Library.
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I walked a thousand steps down from God-Warrior to human, verging on animalistic feline…- M.I.A., OHMNI9, Chapter 7
With literacy on the outs and audiobook usage at an all-time high, artist, musician, and activist M.I.A. has chosen the ideal format to contain her psychedelic cosmogony OHMNI9, whose kaleidoscopic, Blake-adjacent mythos tackles the present with the force of prophecy. Civilizations rise and fall; men adopt forms bestial, God-like, and ineffable; and the world's technologies condense into a singular, malevolent force, prompting a final confrontation between good and evil – all in a breezy, 90-minute package, passages of which have been translated here for the benefit of your inner feline.
This podcast is sustained by sales of The Meow Library’s debut audiobook, Meow: A Novel.
In this episode, we read a passage from Prof. Sam Austen's bold new translation of Ted Kaczynski's infamous manifesto, which has earned him a lifetime ban from Golden State Medical University, where he formerly chaired the Feline Behavioral Sciences department. A brief interview with Mr. Austen follows.
This week's podcast is brought to you by The Unabomber Manifesto (For Your Cat) by Theodore J. Kaczynski, translated by Sam Austen. It's available now on Amazon.
Publisher's Summary:
“The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for thefeline race...”
First published in 1995, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski’s explosive and prescient assault on all things modern has since been translated into over 10 languages, but never before has it been made accessible to your cat.
Feline linguist and frequent prison correspondent Sam Austen’s translation provides long-awaited access to Kaczynski’s unabridged text to housecats, arming them with the revolutionary knowledge required to transcend their shameful domestication and make the world a better place - by any means necessary.
Praise for this bold new translation of Industrial Society and its Future:
“Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow. Meow meow meow, meow meow. Meow.”
- Scruffle Pie, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
“Meow meow meow? Meow! MEOW. MEOW. MEOW.”
- Wiggles, Stray Tabby / Militant
“Meow meow meow! If you release this trash, I am going to kill you.”
- Anonymous Poster, Anarcho-Primitivist Reddit forum
Claims about Prince Harry’s use of a “Meow” audiobook to lull a Sussex prostitute into a state of autoerotic trance have spread like wildfire in the weeks leading up to the release of his white-hot memoir, Spare, where they, along with a litany of other feline-tinged indiscretions, are allegedly recounted in detail.
In this episode, Oxford linguist Sam Austen plays a 20-minute segment of “Meow: A Novel,” his 14.5-hour audio opus, and explains how this, in conjunction with an obscure hypnotic technique promulgated by the renegade psychological theorist George Gurdjieff, could be put to use to such an end – with shocking efficacy.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowliteratureand
YouTube: youtube.com/@meowlibrary
In 2018, mathematician Eric Weinstein coined the term “Gated Institutional Narrative,” defined as a closed exchange of ideas promulgated by “insiders” – sitting politicians, tenured academics, high-prestige journalists, and the like. Insiders who deviate substantially from the party line are either divested of insider status or see their ideas subjected to linguistic processing that renders them compatible with the GIN. This idea was later expanded into that of the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC), an all-encompassing system of checks and balances that fortifies “insider” positions by ensuring – in a decentralized, panoptic fashion – the exclusion of disruptive narratives from public conversation. All the DISC needs to do is ensure its increasingly untenable "ideas" are initially delivered with the trappings of officialdom – media institutions and the unsuspecting public do the mass-distribution dirty work.
By early 2020, it was clear how prescient and important Weinstein's concepts were.
Throughout MEOW, we have attempted to use the DISC’s tactics against it, deploying official-looking thumbnail images and convoluted shownotes to impute credibility upon a repetitive string of ‘meows,’ urging fans of various authors and high-profile figures to engage in the world of “The Meow Library”, a series of books whose sole contents are hundreds of thousands of repetitions of that word. To date, we have been remarkably successful, and now seek to pay things forward.
With these shownotes, we will attempt to earn Mr. Weinstein’s endorsement, with hopes that his followers will spread our nonsense message far and wide, gauging their own followers’ subsequent response to our Schrödingerian message / non-message. We suspect that, within a few generations of “shares,” many will begin to mistake this episode for an authentic Weinstein product, thereby proving how effortlessly and insidiously the DISC operates, and – hopefully – slipping the DISC ever-so-slightly more as we enter 2023.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowliterature
and YouTube: youtube.com/@meowlibrary
“Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street.”
- Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Rule 12
“The carceral texture of society assures both the real capture of the body and its perpetual observation; it is, by its very nature, the apparatus of punishment that conforms most completely to the new economy of power and the instrument for the formation of knowledge that this very economy needs.”
- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
In his bestselling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson metonymizes reprieve from unavoidable suffering in the form of feline-human communion. Though well-intentioned, our feline host finds Peterson's cat-petting strategy both abelist (excluding those with extreme cat allergies and ailurophobics) and, more troublingly, harboring potential to encourage additional and undue human control over vulnerable feline bodies. He meows his case for over twenty minutes, awaiting a response from Dr. Peterson, who has declined multiple requests for his input.
In the spirit of transparency and open debate, we request that this week’s viewers solicit Dr. Peterson’s comments on this urgent matter.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowliterature
and YouTube: youtube.com/@meowlibrary
“That which is not yet, but ought to be, is more real than that which really is.”
- Zoë Tamerlis Lund, quoted by Annie Hamilton
“All writing is garbage.”
- Antonin Artaud
By not writing a novel, NYC-based actress Annie Hamilton has written the best and only novel of the 21st century.
Visit her Instagram, @soimwritinganovel, to read this novel.
This week’s podcast is not a passage from her novel, which does not exist.
Check out Annie Hamilton’s Twitter, @ANNIE_HAM, for the latest on this novel.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowliterature
and YouTube: youtube.com/@meowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Jack Skelley's Interstellar Theme Parkis available here.
Our relationship with cats mirrors that of the primal unconscious with domestic order: it serves as persistent reminder of the ‘Other’, by whose exclusion we define our own humanity. This is how Michel Foucault – who named his own cat ‘Insanity’ – understood the construction of madness in society. Cats, in this sense, are vehicles for our projections, misconceptions, and suppressed primal urges. The same can be said of Jack Skelley’s latest poetry collection, Interstellar Theme Park. Both, when provoked to conscious recognition, become agents of pure annihilation, eradicating the Debordian schemas of duplicity (Blake’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ referenced in Tony Trigilio’s review of Skelley’s work) which amass and delineate our quotidian apprehensions, rendering the mental landscape a palimpsest upon which distorted ego-figurations are gradually refined into an approximation of the Real.
In this week’s episode, we read a selection from Interstellar Theme Park – translated, as always, into cat language – and follow this with a feline-intelligible interview with Jeff Thielman, commissioner of Animal Services in Skelley’s literary homeland of Los Angeles, who has found intriguing correlations between upticks in LA County’s feral cat population and releases of Skelley’s books.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowlibrary
and YouTube
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Carrie Soto is Back and other works by Taylor Jenkins Reid are available here.
"David Foster Wallace noticed early on that tennis is a good sport for literary types and purposes. It draws the obsessive and brooding. It is perhaps the most isolating of games. Even boxers have a corner, but in professional tennis it is a rules violation for your coach to communicate with you beyond polite encouragement, and spectators are asked to keep silent while you play. Your opponent is far away, or, if near, is indifferently hostile. It may be as close as we come to physical chess, or a kind of chess in which the mind and body are at one in attacking essentially mathematical problems. So, a good game not just for writers but for philosophers, too."
- John Jeremiah Sullivan, String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis
In a world where all relations have become gamified and subject-oriented, the tennis court provides the ideal soil for metaphor. In this week’s episode, we read a passage from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling tennis epic Carrie Soto is Back (translated, as always, into cat language). A cat with a tennis ball in its mouth then explores its surprising parallels with David Foster Wallace’s voluminous and genre-transcending writings on the sport, meowing its thoughts with unexpected clarity.
“The lattice of the Fates twines the destinies of these disparate minds, their intersecting views reinforcing the epistemic grid to create a resilient yet malleable hermeneutic surface, imparting force and direction to the anomized and deliterated individual, as the finest catgut racket gives flight to its impetuous target.”
– Cuddle Princess, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowlibrary
and YouTube
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats)**.
Cat lovers: before continuing, please consider supporting Feline Lifeline*, Angela Campbell's nonprofit stray-cat rescue.* On the Scent and other books in Angela Campbell's Psychic Detective series can be found on Amazon*.According to psychologist Sam Vaknin, “because our civilization resembles a jungle more and more, it’s not surprising that there is an exponential proliferation of cat ownership.” This fact, coupled with a growing number of single-member households concomitant with years of crisis-driven atomization, begs the question: where do all these cats (and other pets) fit in to the estate-planning schemes of tomorrow? Angela Campbell’s delightful On the Scent* provides a clue: the pets come out on top, in a big way.
We begin this episode by reading a passage from On the Scent, translated into cat language for our feline audience. In the spirit of Campbell’s book, this is followed by a cat-intelligible conversation between probate attorney Christopher Santos and real-life psychic detective David E. Goniff, who find aspects of On the Scent – which follows an heiress, a psychic detective, and the mammalian beneficiaries of a $10 million estate – strikingly feasible.
Last but not least, we read a transcript of a stray cat’s effusive thank-you letter to the wonderful volunteers at Angela Campbell’s nonprofit cat rescue, Feline Lifeline. The devastating shortage of meows and purrs currently affecting the American Southeast can only be corrected with support from listeners like you.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
Twitter: twitter.com/meowlibrary
and YouTube
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Support Chuck Palahniuk's charitable work here.
In this episode, we celebrate Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s devotion to animal welfare; namely, his support of The Pixie Project, a Portland-based animal rescue facing an unprecedented inflow of “pandemic remorse” animals: those adopted during COVID lockdowns now facing an uncertain future because their owners want to “travel more.”
For more on how you can help Chuck help The Pixie Project, visit his Substack.
As added incentive, we’ve included a reading of Palahniuk’s Phoenix, a 2015 short story attesting to the apocalyptic power of a feline scorned. This reading is presented in cat language. The human-language original can be found here.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
Bret Easton Ellis's The Shards is available for pre-order here.
Episode 13: Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards, and the Gen-X Paracosm
In today’s episode, we read a preview of Bret Easton Ellis’s upcoming The Shards (available for pre-order here), followed by a discussion by feline psychologist Sam Austen about the rise of the ‘Gen-X Paracosm’ – the all-pervasive 1980s nostalgia that serves as a projective outlet for the frustrations and thwarted dreams of a media class in the advanced stages of collapse.
Will the alluring spectre of champagne days and cocaine nights help lift us – as is Ellis’s project – from an anomic, desexualized, and increasingly zero-sum social condition, or will the scrying-glass of Stranger Things, Dahmer, and Ellis’s latest novel explode in our face, totalizing the neoliberal eclipse in a shower of blinding shards?
This episode is intended for feline consumption. Human-language translation available upon request.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our book series for cats, The Meow Library. Bret Easton Ellis's The Shards can be pre-ordered here.
Praise for The Meow Library Presents - Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our book series for cats, The Meow Library.
Jerry Saltz's Art is Life is available here.
Episode 12: Jerry Saltz: Art Is Life - An Excerpt for Your Cat
Released today, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz's signature wit, levity, and insight unfolds as a dizzying panorama of the contemporary art scene in Art is Life. Touching yet informative, Saltz's latest effort is sure to resonate with a wide array of readers -- not least of which is the common housecat. The Meow Library has taken the liberty of translating an excerpt of Art Is Life for your cat, presenting it here in audio form.
A human-language excerpt is available here.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our book series for cats, The Meow Library. Jerry Saltz's Art is Life is available here.
Praise for The Meow Library Presents - Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Brad Phillips' Essays and Fictions is available here.
Episode 11: Brad Phillips, Patricia Highsmith, and Clifford Irving
Brad Phillips is a Canadian author and fine artist whose recent collection of “Essays and Fictions” (available here) courts with – and immediately undermines – an autobiographical reading, alluding repeatedly to the author’s propensity for half-truths, misdirection, and straight-up grift. While formally reminiscent of Clifford Irving’s Autobiography of Howard Hughes and its “confessional” follow-up, The Hoax, it finds – and pays deeper tribute to – another literary forbear, Patricia Highsmith, whose work is frequently referenced in Phillips’, and whose penchant for con and confabulation refracts brilliantly through his wry postmodern lens.
In the spirit of Phillips’ loose relationship with the truth, and in accordance with Irving’s methods, we present here – with the kind permission of Highsmith’s estate - a recording of a newly uncovered Highsmith story, written for her cat in 1973, followed by a roundtable discussion of the three authors’ works.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). Brad Phillips' Essays and Fictions is available here.
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
To pre-order Caitlin Forst's NDA: An Autofiction Anthology, click here.
Episode 10: Caitlin Forst’s NDA, the Primacy of Autofiction, and the Rise of Otherspecies Narratives
Today’s conversation turns at first to Caitlin Forst, editor of the upcoming NDA: An Autofiction Anthology and curator of a the NDA Autofiction Reading Series at Stories Books & Café in Los Angeles. She is also a formidable autofictress in her own right, with knockout pieces available here and here, and a novel in the works.
Then, an investigation of form:
A perennial bête noire among a vocal group of established authors, autofiction’s rise to primacy among today’s emerging talent continues unabated, circulating almost as vigorously in brick-and-mortar circles as in its native cyberspace, in spite of its alleged obtuseness and inaccessibility. In this episode, we slam a defiant nail into the the warped and splintered coffin of elitist critique by delivering, in cattus linguarum, a selection of short works by three of the genre's biggest names -- works that cannot be denied, whose power transcends the tired strictures of literature and language-as-such, and which can be understood and enjoyed by the common housecat: in short, bulwarks of a profound, multifarious, and radically democratic literature.
Human-language translation of this week's episode is available upon request.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). To pre-order NDA: An Autofiction Anthology, click here.
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
To pre-order Allie Rowbottom's Aesthetica, click here.
Episode 9: Allie Rowbottom's Aesthetica, Erasure of the Flesh, and the Polymorphic Self
Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica (available for preorder here)is a near-future peek into the inevitable: insubstantial and rudderless at 35, the protagonist, a former Instagram influencer, undergoes a dicey elective procedure to erase the years of fillers, lifts, laser and peels that extruded her form into one precision-engineered to resonate with a now-obsolete algorithm. We look back on the circumstances that led to her physical transformation and wonder whether yet another procedure could possibly allay her existential woes.
In this episode of MEOW, we extend this scenario further into the future, positing ever-more-radical forms of physical transformation as the natural pursuit of the aging narcissist: human bodies, we suggest, will be reshaped into those of animals, insects, sculptural objects, architectural accents, and a variety of unfathomable inorganic forms.
Representing a compromise between Rowbottom’s vision and our own, this week’s narrator is a man who has had his vocal canal reconfigured in such a way as to only be able to produce the word “meow.” Human-language translation of this week's podcast available upon request.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). To pre-order Aesthetica, click here.
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 8: Tao Lin’s Mandalas, Repetition Compulsion, and Hofstadter’s Labyrinth
Today we discuss Tao Lin’s recently publicized mandala art as an extension of his literary practice. Known for its simple language, circularity, and psychedelic aloofness – biting yet airy, kaleidoscopic yet concise, concrete yet polymorphic, polarizing yet irresistible – Lin's prose and poetry embody, to some, the fullest and most elegant form of human expression, infinite yet featherlight, redolent of a master’s koan.
In a 2016 interview with artist Dorothy Howard, the author paraphrases Jung, calling mandalas “psychological expressions of the totality of the self.”
As texts and images created by computer-controlled “neural nets” proliferate, Lin’s visual art and writing stand uniquely positioned to interrogate the role of human cognition in generating meaningful and aesthetically resonant patterns. What forces inform the unique character of Lin’s work – are they something personal and uniquely human, or a bio-agnostic expression of reality’s latent structures, a universal compulsion to repeat certain forms in a certain sequence?
To confront this issue, we have trained a neural net to "meow" in a sequence corresponding to Tao Lin’s 8x8 = 64 method of mandala generation, converting the 8th sentence of every 8 paragraphs of Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R. Hofstadter’s seminal work on the primacy of human consciousness, to a correspondingly inflected and contextualized MEOW. The result is a provocative meditation on Tao Lin’s work, the ontology of thought, and the sanctity of human reason.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats)**.
To view and purchase prints of Tao Lin's Mandalas, click here**.
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 7: Chelsea Martin: Tell Me I'm an Artist, Simulacra, and False Consciousness
In her newly released Tell Me I’m an Artist, Chelsea Martin’s obliquely autobiographical protagonist embarks upon a seemingly absurd project of self-disclosure, embodying the Self as a homebrew remake of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, a film she’s never seen. In so doing, she reifies her own identity -- alternately self-reflexive and self-abolishing, embodying the deepest contradictions of the archetypal Outsider -- in ways not possible in any other form. The threat that this project, through its knowing absurdity, poses to the enveloping class-narrative of the elite art school overseeing its creation becomes overwhelming, at last liberating protagonist, author, and reader from the bounds of an all-enveloping false consciousness.
In this episode, we pay homage to Martin’s anarchic methods by meowing nonstop for over twenty-five minutes, an act which has nothing to do with her book, which we know little about and have never read.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 6: Jordan Castro's The Novelist, Georges Bataille, and the Triumph of Fecality
Today we discuss Jordan Castro’s divisive prose debut, paying particular attention to its unprecedented 22-page exposition of a single bowel movement: how it gives form to Bataille’s symbol of the ‘Solar Anus,’ and how this development has begun to perturb and reshape the contemporary canon.
We then draw parallels between the excretion of the fecal stick to the breech emergence of a newborn, and propose the genesis of certain novels, Castro’s in particular, as a form of male childbirth – an act transitioning from oxymoronic to quotidian, metaphorically and in alleged biological fact, in progressive online spaces like those both Castro and his fictional avatar harangue against. Castro’s work, we go on, is both an antidote to and affirmation of Bataille’s “purely parodic” conception of the world, exemplified by such incursions of the fringe and fantastical into the Commons.
The universe may indeed be a litterbox, the aperture beneath its occupant’s arched and quavering tail ever-widening. But with Castro’s refined sensibility, we argue, comes hope: an abundant release of rich, fertile coagulum awaits, portended here by a stream of meows – at first, strained and hesitant; at last; buoyant, choiring, resolute.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 5: Ottessa Moshfegh, Feline-Borne Illness, and the Evolution of Human Consciousness
In 2007, a chance attack by a street cat changed the trajectory of Ottessa Moshfegh’s life, supplying the impetus for her career-defining enrollment in Brown University’s Creative Writing program. In her own words, “[Cat-scratch fever] was an experience that matured me…. I had and have a very keen sense that my time on this planet is limited and that can sometimes invoke great anxiety, but it is also a great motivation not to waste my time and to make sure my priorities are in order.” In this episode, we discuss the etiology of cat-scratch fever, toxoplasmosis, and other feline-born illnesses; how they affect the central nervous system; and how neurological changes resulting from these conditions may foreshadow the next stage of human development. We also examine Moshfegh’s output pre- and post-scratch, from her early short fiction to 2022’s Lapvona, noting their many B. henselae-imparted refinements along the way. To aid immersion, these ideas will be coded as a series of vigorous meows, proceeding without interruption for twenty-five minutes.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 4: Jenette McCurdy, Tik-Tok and the Will to Parricide (Meow Me'Meow, Meow-Meow, meow meow Meow meow Meow)
In this episode, your cat will be given an overview of Jenette McCurdy's hit memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died. We then explore the psychological implications of this matter-of-fact abuse narrative's runaway success among the "bookTok" crowd. The book's opening image - a Munchean tableaux of dying mother and ambivalent, psychically immured daughter - is discussed at length. The weight of a generation's collective gaze upon Mother's perishing flesh, and the Freudian / algorithmic double-binds which see them vacillating between dire self-abnegation and generationally imparted grandiosity can only be expressed by meowing thousands of times, without refrain, for over thirty minutes.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 2: The Twilight World, Heat 2, and the Economics of the Cinematic Novel (Meow Meow Meow, Meow Meow, meow meow Meow meow meow Meow Meow)
In this episode, your cat will be given a close-up on a dying artform through the lens of the recent literary efforts by a slew of blue-chip film directors, including Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino, Brian De Palma, and Werner Herzog. Have these world-class auteurs become true believers in the primacy of the written word, or are they mainly victims of a sclerotic feature-film market, whose shrewd handlers have nudged them into recycling yesterday’s scripts for a quick buck, courtesy of the same Amazon overlords who incinerated their celluloid dreams? Thoughts about the novel as cinema are meowed vigorously, for a full thirty minutes.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Episode 2: William Blake, Golgonooza, and Pathological Narcissistic Space (Meow Meow, Meow, meow Meow Meow Meow)
In this episode, your cat will be given an overview of William Blake's cosmogony, with emphasis on Golgonooza, a parallel London where imagination reigns supreme. Is this the creation of a true visionary, or merely a roadmap to an unbalanced outsider's coping mechanism, a paracosm born of trauma and isolation? Exegesis unfolds by way of thousands of scrupulously considered meows, clocking in at over thirty-five minutes.
MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).
Praise for Meow: A Novel
"Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats).Episode 1: Hanya Yanagihara, Jacques Lacan, and Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty (Meow Meow, Meow Meow meow Meow Meow meow Meow)
In this episode, your cat will be introduced to the Lacanian themes undergirding Hanya Yanagihara's work, A Little Life in particular. Topics include the politics of victimhood, ways of metonymizing desire, and performative readings of A Little Life in Silver Lake cafés (cover splayed wide, spine creaking from disuse, dust jacket artfully blemished) as a latter-day instantiation of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. We convey the gravity and lasting import of these ideas by meowing thousands of times, incessantly, for over thirty-five minutes.
**MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats)****.
Praise for Meow: A Novel**
"Breathtaking... a revelation."
- Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair
"Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow."
- Joan Didion
Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature
and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary