Explore every episode of the podcast MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 34. Han Kang's Nobel Prize Controversy: A Translator's Perspective | 11 Oct 2024 | 00:26:02 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Han Kang's The Vegetarian can be purchased here. The basis of Nobel laureate Han Kang's The Vegetarian is a line by Korean poet Yi Sang: "I believe that humans should be plants." But some, like today's interviewee, believe that humans should be cats. A Meow Library translator has taken exception to Han Kang being awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, citing the many errors in the English editions of The Vegetarian and her other, lesser-known works. Certain that the Nobel committee is unfamiliar with her books in their original Korean, and that the translated work is not truly of Kan's authorship, he feels that the award should be revoked. "Any English translation of Han Kang is bound to mislead. The tonal properties of Korean are totally lost to the Anglophone world. Meows are the only language that could possibly convey the melancholy and gravitas of Kang's original prose -- and perhaps even surpass it," he remarks. After a brief introductory statement, our translator recites a 27-minute passage of The Vegetarian, translated his way. It is his wish that the Nobel committee take note of his improvements and distribute the 2024 Literature prize accordingly. This podcast is made possible by sales of our first translation for cats, Meow: A Novel. | |||
| 33. Sally Rooney's Intermezzo: Love Under the Specter of Marx | 26 Sep 2024 | 00:26:36 | |
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. | |||
| 24. Ian F. Svenonius, Jean-Luc Godard, and Sam Austen: Against the Written Word | 21 Feb 2023 | 00:26:36 | |
"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." "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." "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." | |||
| 23. M.I.A., OHMNI9, and the Evolution of the Audiobook: A Translation For Your Cat | 07 Feb 2023 | 00:27:54 | |
I walked a thousand steps down from God-Warrior to human, verging on animalistic feline… With literacy on the outs and audiobook usage at an all-time high, artist, musician, and activist M.I.A. has chosen the ideal delivery vector for her psychedelic cosmogony OHMNI9, whose kaleidoscopic, Blake-adjacent mythos tackles the present with all the force of prophecy. Here, civilizations rise and fall; men adopt forms bestial, God-like, and ineffable; and the world's technologies condense into a malevolent singularity, prompting a final confrontation between good and evil – all in a dazzlingly brisk, 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. | |||
| 22. A Bold New Translation of Ted Kaczynski's "Industrial Society and Its Future" (aka "The Unabomber Manifesto") | 01 Feb 2023 | 00:26:07 | |
In this episode, we read a passage from Prof. Sam Austen's feline-language translation of Ted Kaczynski's infamous manifesto, which has reportedly 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. UPDATE 06/20/23 - Amazon has shut down production of The Unabomber Manifesto (For Your Cat) and terminated Sam Austen's Kindle Publishing account. There are estimated to be approximately 300 copies in circulation. If you find one for sale on the secondary market, please point us toward the listing for a reward. This week's podcast was brought to you by The Unabomber Manifesto (For Your Cat) by Theodore J. Kaczynski, translated by Sam Austen, which has been banned worldwide as of 6/20/2023. Publisher's Summary: | |||
| 21. Prince Harry's Memoir, Hypnotic Cascades, and the Teachings of Gurdjieff | 10 Jan 2023 | 00:26:02 | |
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 George Gurdjieff, could be used 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 | |||
| 20. Crashing Institutional Gates With Schrödinger’s Cat: An Object Lesson in Eric Weinstein’s DISC | 28 Dec 2022 | 00:25:55 | |
In 2018, mathematician Eric Weinstein coined the term "Gated Institutional Narrative (GIN),” defined as a closed exchange of ideas promulgated by “insiders” – sitting politicians, tenured academics, high-prestige journalists, and the like. Among these insiders, those who deviate substantially from the party line are either divested of their privileged 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 privelege by ensuring – in a decentralized, panoptic fashion – the exclusion of disruptive narratives from public conversation. The DISC's power is entirely self-regulating: as long as its increasingly untenable narratives are initially delivered with the trappings of official, complicit media outlets and the unsuspecting public will eagerly do its mass-distribution dirty work. By early 2020, it became clear to heterodox thinkers - and even many traditionalists operating within the DISC - 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 | |||
| 19. Jordan Peterson’s 12th Rule, Ailurophobia, and the Feline Panopticon | 20 Dec 2022 | 00:26:02 | |
“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 the final chapter of his his bestselling 12 Rules for Life, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson deploys feline-human communion as a means of reprieve from overwhelming human suffering. While many have found solace in this approach, this week's host finds Peterson's cat-petting strategy problematic -- it can be read as abelist (excluding those with extreme cat allergies and ailurophobics) and, more troublingly, may harbor 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 | |||
| 18. Annie Hamilton and the Novel That Wasn't There | 13 Dec 2022 | 00:29:09 | |
“That which is not yet, but ought to be, is more real than that which really is.” “All writing is garbage.” 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 | |||
| 17. Jack Skelley, Guy Debord, and LA's Cat Problem | 06 Dec 2022 | 00:26:02 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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 chaos, 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 | |||
| 16. Taylor Jenkins Reid, David Foster Wallace, and the Catgut Parcae | 29 Nov 2022 | 00:26:05 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). "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 the majority of one-on-one relations are becoming increasingly adversarial and gamified, the tennis court provides an ideal clay 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 varied and unexpected parallels reinforcing the epistemic grid to create a resilient hermeneutic surface, imparting force and direction to the anomized and deliterated individual as the thrust of the 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 | |||
| 15. Angela Campbell's On the Scent, Psychic Detectives, and Feline-Centered Estate Planning | 22 Nov 2022 | 00:29:04 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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 | |||
| 32. Matthew Davis, Let Me Try Again, and the Gen Z Superego | 21 Aug 2024 | 00:29:09 | |
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. | |||
| 14. Chuck Palahniuk, The Pixie Project, and a Reading of ‘Phoenix’ | 15 Nov 2022 | 00:26:39 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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. Enthusiastically adopted during COVID lockdowns, rescue pets are now being resheltered in droves, enabling their owners to shed their tired dog-parent personae and ease into a more cosmopolitan, travel-selfie-based lifestyle. 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, and a warning to fair-weather pet adopters. 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 | |||
| 13. Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards, and the Gen-X Paracosm | 08 Nov 2022 | 00:29:08 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. 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 with 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 creative class in the advanced stages of decline. 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? 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 | |||
| 12. Jerry Saltz's Art Is Life - An Excerpt for Your Cat | 02 Nov 2022 | 00:26:24 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our book series for cats, The Meow Library. 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 whom is the common housecat. The Meow Library has taken the liberty of translating an excerpt of Art Is Life for your feline companion, 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 | |||
| 11. Brad Phillips, Patricia Highsmith, and Clifford Irving | 26 Oct 2022 | 00:26:14 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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 | |||
| 10. Caitlin Forst's NDA, the Primacy of Autofiction, and the Rise of Otherspecies Narratives | 17 Oct 2022 | 00:26:26 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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. And 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 pound 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 | |||
| 9. Allie Rowbottom's Aesthetica, Erasure of the Flesh, and the Polymorphic Self | 11 Oct 2022 | 00:26:08 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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. At 35, rudderless and lost, 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 flourishes, and a variety of unfathomable machine-generated 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 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 Allie Rowbottom's 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 | |||
| 8. Tao Lin's Mandalas, Repetition Compulsion, and Hofstadter's Labyrinth | 04 Oct 2022 | 00:29:18 | |
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 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). 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 Twitter: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary | |||
| 7. Chelsea Martin: Tell Me I'm an Artist, Simulacra, and False Consciousness | 27 Sep 2022 | 00:26:08 | |
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 a totalitarian 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 | |||
| 6. Jordan Castro's The Novelist, Georges Bataille, and the Triumph of Fecality | 20 Sep 2022 | 00:37:49 | |
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 perturbs and reshapes the contemporary canon. We then draw parallels between the excretion of the fecal stick and 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 hermeneutical 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 Twitter: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary | |||
| 5. Ottessa Moshfegh, Feline-Borne Illness, and the Evolution of Human Consciousness | 13 Sep 2022 | 00:27:01 | |
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-borne 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 her work's 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 | |||
| 31. Caroline Calloway, Scammer, and Feline Virality | 13 Aug 2024 | 00:27:44 | |
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. | |||
| 4. Jennette McCurdy, Tik-Tok, and the Will to Parricide | 06 Sep 2022 | 00:34:49 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). Episode 4: Jennette McCurdy, Tik-Tok and the Will to Parricide In this episode, your cat will be given an overview of Jennette McCurdy's hit memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died. We then explore the psychological implications of this stark account of parental abuse's runaway success among the "booktok" and "bookstagram" set. 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 its members vacillating between dire self-abnegation and collective 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 | |||
| 3. The Twilight World, Heat 2, and the Economics of the Cinematic Novel | 31 Aug 2022 | 00:34:52 | |
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 In this episode, your cat will be given a close-up on a dying artform through the lens of several filmmakers-cum-literati, 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 simply victims of a sclerotic feature-film market, nudged by shrewd agents into recycling yesterday’s scripts for a quick buck? Thoughts about the merits and economic upsides of the cinematic novel 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 Follow us on Instagram: @meowliterature | |||
| 2. William Blake, Golgonooza, and Pathological Narcissistic Space | 31 Aug 2022 | 00:37:48 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). Episode 2: William Blake, Golgonooza, and Pathological Narcissistic Space In this episode, your cat will be given an overview of William Blake's cosmogony, with emphasis on Golgonooza, a phantasmagoric London where imagination reigns supreme. Is this landscape conceived of genius, or are we being coursed along the topology of a disordered mind? 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 Twitter: https://twitter.com/meowliterature | |||
| 1. Hanya Yanagihara, Jacques Lacan, and Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty | 30 Aug 2022 | 00:35:27 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). 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, metonymyzation of desire, and performative readings of A Little Life in Silver Lake cafés (cover splayed wide, spine rigid with 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. "Breathtaking... a revelation." | |||
| 30. Gabi Abrão (@sighswoon), Notes on Shapeshifting, and the Poetics of Feline Vocalization | 30 May 2024 | 00:37:37 | |
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 | |||
| 29. Millie Bobby Brown, Nineteen Steps, and the Role of the Ghostwriter | 22 Sep 2023 | 00:29:14 | |
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel 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 | |||
| 28. Cormac McCarthy's Final Interview | 14 Jun 2023 | 00:26:02 | |
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
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. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut work, Meow: A Novel. | |||
| 27. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) Strike, ChatGPT, and the Future of Entertainment | 04 May 2023 | 00:25:54 | |
This podcast is sponsored by Sam Austen's Meow Library. On May 1st, the Writers Guild of America commenced a strike, effecting an industry-wide suspension of film and television production. 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. | |||
| 26. Norman Mailer's Truth and Being: A Paean to Excrement and the Spirit of Meow | 08 Mar 2023 | 00:28:46 | |
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 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. And follow us on Twitter. | |||
| 25. Roald Dahl, Alberto Gullaba, Jr., and a Modest Proposal for Sensitivity Readers | 02 Mar 2023 | 00:25:57 | |
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. Even 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), denying promising minority voices a forum and Bowdlerizing its own questionable past in a sort of Freudian reaction-formation against - and affirmation of - the disproportionate authority imputed by extreme privilege . 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. | |||
| 74. Writers Debate: Must You Read Novels to Write Them? | 24 Feb 2026 | 00:27:54 | |
Debate rages across Twitter as professor and novelist Aaron Gwyn insists that his college-level fiction writing students can't name a single novelist, living or dead. Are we in a literacy crisis? Not necessarily: Many have rushed to his students' defense, purporting to be professional authors who "don't read for pleasure," and who see reading fiction as an ablest bourgeois pose. Do writers really need to be able to read? You know The Meow Library's answer. We invite you to meow along as you listen to this podcast, which is not about literature, and buy our books, which are not books. The finest literature on the planet is in The Meow Library, where every word is "meow." Aaron Gwyn's work is available wherever books are sold. | |||
| 73. The Curious Case of Madeline Cash's Lost Lambs | 17 Feb 2026 | 00:26:36 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. In this week’s podcast, we investigate the hype parade leading up to the release of Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs, easily the most anticipated novel of 2026. This is not so much a review of the book (there are plenty of those) as it is of Cash’s PR team, which is the real work of art here. How does an author rise from obscurity to the upper echelons of English literature—replete with comparisons to Franzen and Pynchon—in the space of one book? And are those comparisons merited? You won’t find out here: we hired Cash’s PR team to funnel you to this podcast, which is a 30-minute recording of a man meowing like a cat. You have already clicked on it. You’ve already heard the first meows. And now you will buy our book. Lost Lambs is available via Macmillan Publishers. This podcast is supported by the alarmingly growing sales of Meow: A Novel. | |||
| 64. Embodied Time: Mark Z. Danielewski's Tom's Crossing and Zoroastrianism | 05 Nov 2025 | 00:29:09 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. In the beginning of Big Fiction, there were encyclopedic novels and mega-novels and then maximal novels. With Mark Z. Danielewski’s newest, the 1,232-page Tom’s Crossing, we have the supermax, a term most commonly used to describe huge prisons with no escape, no variety of existence, and few relations with the outside world. Prison critics call supermax facilities, with their frequent solitary confinement, excessively inhumane. - Tom LeClair, Los Angeles Review of Books The Zoroastrian conception of time, whether lineal or spiral, gave value to the present unrepeatable moment and endowed every act of humanity in history with ultimate meaning. More importantly, it gave hope for the future of the final defeat of the forces are darkness and the Renovation of the world in which we live. - Susan Manek, Time and the Containment of Evil in Zoroastrianism "Too long. DNF." - Anonymous Goodreads review of Tom's Crossing The era of the social media scroll has irreversibly fractured lineal time, redistributing human focus across an immense, depthless breadth of atemporal data. Books of substance--bound quanta of time--may be the only means by which we can regain our attention spans and apprehend the fullness of human experience. As Zoroastrian scholar Susan Manek points out, "Zoroastrianism posits two types of time. The first is time without bounds. Then there is time-within-bounds (lineal time) designed to contain the forces of evil. The purpose then of both time and physical creation is the containment and ultimate defeat of evil." The whole art of printed narrative fiction recapitulates the Zoroastrian creation myth, in which Ahura Mazda binds Ahriman's destructive potential in the substance of Time, contriving, in the process, an entire material realm as a counterweight to Ahriman's wickedness. In scroll-world, any book daring to exceed a certain length is castigated as a Matterhorn of ego, avalanched by critics' seismic invective and maelstroms of neologism (see Federico Perelmuter's Against High Brodernism and Tom LeClair's Enuf is Enuf; sustained assaults against Tom's Crossing's putative genre and particular substance, respectively). About Tom's Crossing: it may be the last bastion against algorithmic brainrot like Sam Austen's Meow: A Novel, which, in this week's podcast, is deployed as the Ahrimanic twin of Danielewski's noble offering. As for the book itself: just read it. The alternative is what you're about to hear. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut effort, Meow: A Novel. Mark Z. Danielewski's Tom's Crossing is available in hardcover through Penguin Random House. | |||
| 63. Will Joyce Carol Oates' Cat Ever Finish War and Peace? | 03 Nov 2025 | 00:29:08 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Zanche is abashed having read (almost) the entirety of "War and Peace" not realizing that Natasha, Anatole, Pierre, & Boris are human beings & not cats; with just a few pages of the epilogue to go, she wonders if she should reread with a clearer understanding of the characters? - Tweet by Joyce Carol Oates, 9/14/24 at 11:40 AM EST Since at least March 20th, 2020, literary icon Joyce Carol Oates' cat, Zanche, has been struggling her way through War and Peace; taking naps every five pages, never quite finishing, dismayed by sparseness of Tolstoy's feline-forward content. As of September 2024, Zanche still has not completed the epilogue. To aid her, The Meow Library has narrated the first ten pages of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (For Your Cat), a painstaking, 762-page translation of the original Russian into Zanche's native tongue. Today's podcast is comprised of this narration, with a brief introduction by the author. A hard copy of the book will be presented to Zanche with Oates' permission. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel. Joyce Carol Oates' latest short-form writing is available on Substack. Her award-winning novels, short stories, and nonfiction works are available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. | |||
| 62. Curtis Sliwa's Cats Fire Back at Trump With Eloquent, 22-Page Written Statement | 22 Oct 2025 | 00:37:37 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. “This isn’t exactly ideal, where he wants to make Gracie Mansion a home for the cats. Gracie Mansion is the magnificent home of Fiorello La Guardia and the great mayors, [like] Rudy Giuliani." - Donald Trump, in response to Curtis Sliwa's NYC Republican mayoral bid This morning, Curtis Sliwa's six cats issued an extensive typewritten statement pushing back against what they call Trump's "presumptuous" and "ill-considered" remarks about their suitability for NYC's highest office. While it's not our policy to comment on politics, we feel this is among the most compelling clowder manifestos to cross our desks in a long time, and publish it here in full for your consideration. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut publication, Meow: A Novel. | |||
| 61. How to Psyop Your Way to a Bestseller: Douglas Scott Wreden, Doug: A DougDoug Story, and the Meow Book | 21 Oct 2025 | 00:29:09 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. "Doug, Doug Doug Doug Doug Doug. Doug Doug Doug. Doug." - Douglas Scott Wreden, Doug: A DougDoug Story (2025) "Meow, Meow Meow Meow Meow. Meow Meow Meow. Meow." - Sam Austen, Meow: A Novel (2022) Both Meow: A Novel (Sam Austen, 2022) and Doug: A DougDoug Story (Douglas Scott Wreden, 2025) are often described as “books that behave like platforms.” Their shared achievement is not simply thematic novelty, but a rigorous exploitation of two psychosomatic mechanisms—semantic satiation and entrainment—that recalibrate reading into a self-reinforcing loop of attention, repetition, and social transmission. Each work converts the codex into a rhythmic apparatus: Austen by radical lexical minimalism (“meow” reiterated ad infinitum), Wreden by procedural maximalism (a story-world braided with streamer call-and-response, chantable proper nouns, and iteration-friendly beats). In different idioms, both titles demonstrate that bestsellers in the era of algorithmic discovery are no longer only read; they are performed, timed, and synchronized. Semantic satiation—the temporary loss of a word’s meaning after rapid repetition—serves as Meow’s primary formal device. Page after page of “meow” accelerates readers toward delexicalization: the signifier severs from its referent, leaving the phonetic grain (m–y–ow) to flood perceptual channels. Far from a gimmick, this collapse triggers two market-relevant consequences. First, meaning-collapse is content-agnostic and copyable: a short video of someone reciting “meow” thirty times already reproduces the book’s core experience. In the attention economy, transmissibility correlates with compressibility; Meow’s unit of experience fits into a caption, a loop, a duet. Second, meaning-collapse is affectively generative: once “meow” ceases to signify “cat,” it becomes timbre, texture, and rhythm. Readers report shifting from semantic parsing to a quasi-musical listening, a pivot that lowers cognitive load while sustaining arousal—an architecture ideal for social media where light cognitive demands amplify share rates. Doug deploys semantic satiation more obliquely—through chantable repetition of “Doug,” “DOUG,” and related shorthands native to livestream chat. Proper names, when hammered by collective repetition, undergo the same delexicalization; “Doug” flips from indexical reference to a percussive token. The proper noun becomes a beat-unit, enabling audience participation that is orthogonal to narrative comprehension. Crucially, both books weaponize satiation not to evacuate meaning but to re-route it—from semantics to sonics, from denotation to drive. Entrainment—the synchronization of an organism’s internal rhythms to external periodicities—explains why these texts feel “irresistible.” In Meow, typographic sameness and lineation scaffold a stable beat. Silent reading rates converge; read-aloud rates stabilize into chant. As repetition continues, respiration and micro-motor behaviors (eye saccades, subvocalization) couple to the page’s isochrony. The book thus becomes a metronome that the body joins. Readers exit with a felt residue—the prosodic ghost of “meow”—that persists as an involuntary loop, extending attention beyond the reading session and nudging re-engagement. Doug stages entrainment socially. The text’s compositional logic mirrors live-stream cycles: build-up, call, chant, payoff, reset. These afford predictable periodicities—beats that facilitate synchronized audience response. Algorithmic feeds prefer regular temporal structure (loopable 7–15 second segments); Doug’s page design effectively pre-masters the text for platform timing. Importantly, entrainment here is bidirectional: the page entrains the reader, and the reader entrains the network. This is only the beginning of our discussion of these two landmark works. In the following podcast, we will continue to entrain and semantically satiate you at least 20,000 more times. | |||
| 60. Apocalyptic Terror: László Krasznahorkai Takes the Nobel Prize in Literature | 09 Oct 2025 | 00:27:54 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 has been awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art," the Swiss Academy announced in a press release this morning. To further reaffirm the power of art, we expound on the implications of Krasznahorkai's Nobel win in a language even more impenetrable than Hungarian. This podcast is sustained by sales of the equally visionary Meow: A Novel. | |||
| 59. Matthew McConaughey's Poems and Prayers, Read For Your Cat | 02 Oct 2025 | 00:26:02 | |
"My prayers are my poems are my prayers." - Matthew McConaughey, Poems and Prayers And now, some prayers for your cat. This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Matthew McConaughey's Poems and Prayers is available from Penguin Random House and wherever books are sold. | |||
| 58. Schattenfroh: Max Lawton's Triumph of Translation | 30 Sep 2025 | 00:27:54 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Max Lawton’s translation of Schattenfroh represents not merely a feat of linguistic dexterity, but an act of transubstantiation: he renders into English a text whose very atmosphere seems to resist Anglophone sensibilities, and does so with an elegance that preserves both its rigor and its strange vitality. His choices are never pedantic, never ornamental for their own sake; rather, they reveal the deep rhythms of the original prose as though the English version had always been latent in the original. In homage to Lawton's peerless achievement, the Meow Library makes this humble offering, derived from the first 11 pages of Schattenfroh in the original. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut translation, Meow: A Novel. Max Lawton's brilliant rendition of Schattenfroh is available now from Deep Vellum. | |||
| 57. R.F. Kuang's Katabasis: The Betrayal of Archimedes | 25 Sep 2025 | 00:29:18 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. In this week's podcast, Archimedes, the sole feline presence in R.F. Kuang's Katabasis, accuses the author of having cut many of his scenes in response to "anti-feline sentiment" at the HarperCollins office. "One notices an unusual dearth of cats for a 560-page magical-realist novel," he begins. "This is in response to the disappearance of Julius, Harper-Collins' office canary. A disappearance I had nothing to do with. My truncated role in the book is an act of unalloyed anti-pss-pss-pss-emitism." The Meow Library staff feels Archimedes makes a compelling point, and are proud to give him this platform. Listen and judge for yourself. This podcast is sustained by sales of Meow: A Novel--345 pages of "meow," and only "meow," that teaches your cat to read. R.F. Kuang's Katabasis is available wherever books are sold. | |||
| 56. Jordan Castro's Muscle Man: Embodied Literature | 16 Sep 2025 | 00:26:36 | |
“Words are parasites of reality, which have become so engorged with reality’s blood so as to seem, to that ugly French nothing-master’—he grinned—‘like the only real thing, but they are nothing more than a mirage.” — Jordan Castro, Muscle Man Jordan Castro’s efforts toward an “embodied literature” continue in his sophomore novel, Muscle Man, a claustrophobic, mortifying, and bizarrely liberating assault on subject and subjectivity seen through the eyes of a fitness-obsessed academic, Harold, whose desire to build himself up in the gym serves as an alibi for his all-encompassing drive towards annihilation—of his inner monologue, of the cloistered space/time it references, and of interiority’s parasitic, omnipresent vehicle: language itself. As Harold undertakes a series of mundane but consuming tasks, culminating with a gym session in which Body and Mind fuse into a transcendent unity, we see him extricated from a labyrinth of neuroses to enter a state of Bataillian negation, equidistant to cosmic horror and Divinity. In this week’s podcast, we read an excerpt from Muscle Man, keenly attuned to Harold’s—and perhaps Castro’s—self-effacing project(s). This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man is available for purchase through Penguin Random House. | |||
| 55. David Duchovny's About Time, Read For Your Cat | 09 Sep 2025 | 00:27:54 | |
"Poetry is not useful.” — David Duchovny, Poet In today’s podcast, The Meow Library is proud to present a selection of poems from David Duchovny’s upcoming poetry collection, About Time, read for your cat. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel. David Duchovny’s About Time is available for preorder from Akashic Books. | |||
| 72. Jennette McCurdy's Half His Age: An Unspeakable Transgression | 10 Feb 2026 | 00:26:39 | |
This podcast is a production of The Meow Library. Jennette McCurdy's new book has us at a loss for words. Some things are simply unspeakable, as this podcast makes plain. Jennette McCurdy's Half His Age is available through Penguin Random House and wherever books are sold. For less transgressive fare, we suggest The Meow Library's new translations of Wuthering Heights and Pride & Prejudice. | |||
| 54. Performative Male Readers: A Modest Proposal | 04 Sep 2025 | 00:34:49 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. According to a recent Independent article by Lydia Spencer-Elliott, the elusive "literary man"--long thought extinct--has become further threatened by an ingeniously camouflaged obligate predator, the "performative male reader." While by all appearances a "literary man," the "performative male reader" (Homo librispretentious) is in fact anything but, using his book as an aesthetic cudgel to lure and subdue unsuspecting female prey. To combat this invasive species, publisher and animal behavior specialist Sam Austen has devised an ingenious trap: copies of the most pretentious books of all time--including titles by Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy--with all content removed, replaced by the word "meow," repeated hundreds of thousands of times. "The appetite of the peformative male reader is voracious; he's utterly indiscriminate when acquiring his weapon of choice," Austen says. "By seeding bookstores with 'meowified' versions of the literary classics favored by these predators, we're making them easy to spot in public. The cats on the covers of these 'meow' books makes them readily distinguishable to the literate public, but performative readers don't know the difference. They'll be trapped at Intelligentsia Coffee reading the word 'meow' thirty to forty thousand times, utterly transfixed. In this distracted state, they are tranquilized and netted by the special task forces active across California and New York dedicated to keeping their population down." This week's podcast gives you a window into the mind-numbing experience of this anti-performative-reading measure, available everywhere books are sold. | |||
| 53. Tao Lin's Nini: Feline Autism, Ensoulment, and Self-Healing | 02 Sep 2025 | 00:26:02 | |
In a new Harper's piece, Tao Lin traces his recent interests in autism, spirituality, and self-healing to his 4-year relationship with a special-needs cat, Nini, whose ailments and special charm adumbrate the fullness of the human experience--in this world and beyond. This week's podcast translates Lin's must-read essay into language worthy of its subject. This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Tao Lin's art, writing, and reading lists are continually archived on his website. | |||
| 52. How Trump Defunded the Humanities and Doomed Literacy Forever: UChicago and the Collapse of the NEA | 18 Aug 2025 | 00:29:09 | |
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. The University of Chicago’s Humanities Department is poised to become one of the largest and most visible casualties of President Trump’s recent defunding of the NEA, with its language departments particularly imperiled. The departments for comparative literature, Germanic studies, Slavic languages and literatures, and South American languages and civilizations are currently slated for “reorganization,” with questions arising as to whether there’s “no longer [a] need to teach” certain languages, and if “partnerships with corporations or other organizations” could support language instruction at UChicago. Given the massive impact to humanities education, particularly in the field of literature, already being seen since Trump’s Q2 NEA defunding announcement, The Meow Library would like to propose a solution: convert all existing world literature to the standard “meow” format, in which every word is replaced with one easily-digested phoneme: “meow.” Literature departments will require no human instructors, only a single cat, who can also provide pest-control services and moral support by way of trills, cuddles, and purrs. We estimate that within one calendar year, all University literature departments will not only be solvent, but in fact highly profitable, if the “meow” strategy is applied. In this episode, our Editor-in-Chief explains his plan to save literacy in great detail. This podcast—and worldwide literacy—are sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel. | |||