Another Insane Devotion: On the Love of Cats and Persons - Hardcover

Trachtenberg, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0738215260 ISBN 13: 9780738215266

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2012

Synopsis

From “a genuine American Dostoevsky” (The Washington Post): a dazzling, funny, bittersweet exploration of the mysteries of relationship, both human and animal.

When his favorite cat Biscuit goes missing, Peter Trachtenberg sets out to find her. The journey takes him 700 miles and many years into his past-- into the history of his relationships with cats and the history of his relationship with his wife F., who may herself be on the verge of disappearing. What ensues is a work that recalls travel narratives from The Incredible Journey to W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. Trachtenberg ponders the mysteries of feline intelligence (why do cats score worse on some tests than pigeons?), the origins of their domestication, their terrible treatment during the Middle Ages. He also looks at the riddle of why any of us loves whom we love and all the unforeseen places to which that devotion leads us.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Trachtenberg is the author of the memoir 7 Tattoos and The Book of Calamaties: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning. His essays, journalism, and short fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, BOMB, TriQuarterly, O, The New York Times Travel Magazine, and A Public Space. His commentaries have been broadcast on NPR'S "All Things Considered." The recipient of a Whiting Writers Fellowship and a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Trachtenburg was also honored for The Book of Calamities, which was the recipient of the 2009 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award "for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity."
www.petertrachtenberg.com

Review

Chicago Tribune, 12/1/2012"'Another Insane Devotion' is more than a literary memoir. . . .His crisscrossing passions are too busy and engaging to succumb to the genre's tendency to drearily impart life lessons. 'The nature of love' is an excuse for him to riff across centuries, from cat burial in ancient Cyprus to the lyrics of Sappho to marriage in the Torah to John Ruskin's unhappy wedding night to the novels of James Salter. This is surely the best book written about what it means to love cats, and to wonder if they love you, since Carl Van Vechten's 'The Tiger in the House.'"

"I'll bet you a giant toy mouse that you will adore this book outright for its scrutiny of the domestic cat in all its cuddlesome glory. . . You may still adore this book for everything else it offers: a suspense story, a love story, a falling-out-of-love story, sex and yearning, literary gossip, economic hardship, conspicuous references to the Western canon, meditations on Being, picturesque Italian getaways, medieval torturers, death.  .  .  . Not many things are better than a kitten, but a book like this comes close." -- Jennifer McDonald, The New York Times Book Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0738215260
• ISBN 13: 9780738215266
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304