PODCAST

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats

The Meow Library

Literary analysis for your cat, presented by meowlibrary.com

arts books

All Episodes

00:26:02

59. Matthew McConaughey's Poems and Prayers, Read For...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/10/02

"My prayers are my poems are my prayers." - Matthew McConaughey, Poems and PrayersAnd 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.

00:27:54

58. Schattenfroh: Max Lawton's Triumph of Translation

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/09/30

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

00:29:18

57. R.F. Kuang's Katabasis: The Betrayal of Archimedes

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/09/25

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

00:26:36

56. Jordan Castro's Muscle Man: Embodied Literature

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/09/16

“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

00:27:54

55. David Duchovny's About Time, Read For Your Cat

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/09/09

"Poetry is not useful.”— David Duchovny, PoetIn 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.

00:34:49

54. Performative Male Readers: A Modest Proposal

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/09/04

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

00:26:02

53. Tao Lin's Nini: Feline Autism, Ensoulment, and...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/09/02

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

00:29:09

52. How Trump Defunded the Humanities and Doomed...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/08/18

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

00:29:09

51. Rebecca Van Laer's Zoosemiotics: The Meaning of...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/08/05

“Consciousness stands in the way of a good life. …the feline mind is one and undivided. Pain is suffered and forgotten, and the joy of life returns.” – John Gray, Feline Philosophy Rebecca Van Laer’s Cat (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) packs nine lives of feline wisdom into a slim but satisfying volume. One of these lives is serene, domesticated: a diaristic jaunt through the anxieties, hopes, and occluded memories awakened by the many cats in Van Laer’s own life. Another is feral, possessed of

00:29:18

50. The Wrath of BookTok: The Rise and Fall of Luke...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/06/04

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Luke Bateman, former rugby player and Bachelor star turned BookTok darling, recently scored a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster imprint Atria Books—despite having no prior publishing experience. This deal has set BookTok ablaze with controversy, with critics calling out the publishing industry’s bias toward privilege and celebrity.Yet Bateman insists he’s been working on stories for years and hopes to use his platform to uplift others. Still,

00:29:18

49. What's the Deal With Ocean Vuong?

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/05/12

This podcast is a production of The Meow Library. Ocean Vuong’s poetic voice, marked by tender precision and aching vulnerability, speaks in layered silences and elliptical truths—not unlike a cat who only says “meow.” At first glance, the comparison may seem irreverent, but it unveils a profound aesthetic parallel. Like the cat’s single utterance, Vuong’s work often circles a limited lexicon to explore a universe of emotion. His poems, such as those in Night Sky with Exit Wounds, return to

00:37:37

48. Neural Whisker Relay: A Sci-Fi LitRPG For Your Cat

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/05/06

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. This week’s podcast is the first in an ongoing Literary RPG series immersing you and your cat in Neural Whisker Relay, an alternate universe where Egypt is the world’s leading power and cats its apex technologists. Will you and your cat forge a bond strong enough to ensure world domination, or will this world of paranoia and eldritch technologies supply the final rend in human-feline relations? CHAPTER 1 Meow.Meow meow? Meow. Meow meow meow.

00:26:14

47. Simon & Schuster's Sean Manning Publishes Stray Cat

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/04/14

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. On a recent March morning, the Simon & Schuster video team is huddled in the best-sellers corner of McNally Jackson, taping its upcoming web series, Bookstore Blitz. Sean Manning, the flagship imprint’s new publisher, supervises from the sidelines. The concept of the show is simple: Guests get $100 and five minutes for a bookstore shopping spree, a sort of literary Criterion Closet Picks. Today, however, the team is filming someone a little

00:29:09

46. The Art of Misdirection: Krysten Ritter's "Retreat"

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/04/07

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Krysten Ritter's Retreat can be purchased here. In Krysten Ritter’s Retreat, a novel ostensibly about grifting, murder, and the fractured self, we find not merely a narrative of deception but an ontological crisis wrapped in the velvet paw of postmodern performativity. To fully grasp the layered artifice of Liz Dawson — alias Elizabeth Hastings, alias Isabelle Beresford, alias…whoever she needs to be next — one must resist the urge to interpret

00:26:02

45. New Paradigms: Sophie Kemp's Paradise Logic

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/04/02

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Sophie Kemp's Paradise Logic can be purchased here. What makes a novel worthy of publication? This is a question being honed in on by Simon and Schuster’s rising star Sean Manning, who trafficks in personas — both of new authors and untapped audiences. And nowhere is persona as consubstantial with substance than in Sophie Kemp’s wildly chaotic, sometimes incomprehensible, and therefore perfectly on-target Paradise Logic, which reads like a

00:34:52

44. Hololive Star Vestia Zeta Reads Meow: A Novel

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/03/06

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. On February 22nd, 2025 -- International Cat Day -- fans of Vestia Zeta were treated to a heartfelt reading of Sam Austen's Meow: A Novel during an unprecedented livestream that left little doubt as to the Vtuber's true species (she is a cat). You can watch the complete reading here, or tune into this podcast for the author's reflections on the artistry and emotional heft of Zeta's oratory. The complete, 14.5-hour audiobook of Meow:

00:29:08

Literary Antimatter: Federico Perelmuter, László...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/02/24

“To read—and announce oneself as having read—literature in translation is to be tasteful and intelligent, a latter-day cosmopolitan in an age of blighted provincialism.”— Federico Perelmuter, "Against High Brodernism" (Los Angeles Review of Books, 22 Feb. 2025)In his discursive review of László Krasznahorkai’s Herscht 07769 (New Directions, 2024), critic Federico Perelmuter identifies a strain of literary discourse he dubs “High Brodernism” — the tendency of contemporary American critics to heap

00:29:08

42. What is Alt-Lit?

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/02/06

Have I told you I can’t read contemporary novels anymore? I think it’s because I know too many of the people who write them. I see them all the time at festivals, drinking red wine and talking about who’s publishing who in New York. … Why do they pretend to be obsessed with death and grief and fascism—when really they’re obsessed with whether their latest book will be reviewed in the New York Times?— Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You Like so much flotsam in the media slipstream, works

00:34:49

41. Miranda July On All Fours: A Cross-Species Odyssey

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2025/01/20

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Miranda July's All Fours is available for purchase here. Miranda July’s All Fours is, at first glance, a piercing exploration of a middle-aged woman’s sexual and existential awakening. But look closer—squint, perhaps, as though sizing up a mouse—and you’ll see that this is not simply a book about one woman’s journey. It is, in fact, a book of and for cats. July has written a novel that speaks to their sensibilities, their rhythms, their

00:34:49

40. A Complete Unknown: Bob Dylan's Forgotten...

MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats ·

2024/12/27

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. The release of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has revived interest in Dylan's obscure 1971 "prose poetry collection," Tarantula. A Dadaist stream-of-consciousness that sits somewhere between Joyce and an early AI phishing bot, Tarantula has been widely dismissed, but has enjoyed a critical resurgence in recent years. In this podcast, we recite a lengthy passage of this strange and polarizing work. Allegedly written under the influence of

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