Another Insane Devotion: On the Love of Cats and Persons
304
Another Insane Devotion: On the Love of Cats and Persons
304eBook
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780738216171 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Books |
| Publication date: | 11/13/2012 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
PeterTrachtenberg.com
What People are Saying About This
Eileen Myles, author of Cool for You and Inferno
“This is Peter’s best book and if you don’t know what that means just imagine your sweetest, most perverse storytelling friend asks to meet because he has a confession to make. When you arrive he informs you that he loves his cat more than life itself, or exactly that much and then he opens his shirt and shows you the cat tattoo and then he begins to tell you of his love and in a puff hours vanish and it’s absolutely riveting.”
Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
“I am not a cat person—I approach each one on a cat-by-cat basis—yet Peter Trachtenberg is such a wonderful writer, and this book is so damn good, that I found myself carried along by its lucidity, its generosity, its deep wisdom. In the end, of course, Another Insane Devotion is about much more than cats.”
Publishers Weekly, 9/10/12“Through short sections of intelligent, often humorous prose, former and potential girlfriends and past pets are conjured in hopes of understanding how people can fall in and out of love…Trachtenberg’s journey proves entertaining and enlightening.”
T: The New York Times Style Magazine, 10/7/12“Another Insane Devotion—about love, sex, marriage and especially cats—is a hallmark of brainy discursiveness.”
Booklist 11/15/12“[A] meditation on the meaning(s) of love…Trachtenberg’s lyric writing keeps the reader interested…making for a memoir that reads like a compelling work of fiction.”
Chronogram, November 2012“Spiked with intellectual digressions and unlikely graphics, Trachtenberg’s eccentric meditation on loss and transition is not your everyday cat book…[He] uses language as a flensing tool, peeling back layers to glimpse deeper truths.”
Chicago Tribune, 12/2/12“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."
Hudson Valley News, 11/14/12“The season’s most eccentric book…You’ll have many smiles and a few tears while reading…The story of…the fierce and tender bonds of love between people and between people and cats…The book, in all its richness and humor,…tells us about loving a cat, loving a human being and where those loves can take us.”
InfoDad.com, 11/29/12 “Sensitive writing, its focus on love and loss and the way the two sometimes merge, will intrigue people trying to come to terms with their own relationships (human and animal) and interested in a journey that proves as enlightening as it is entertaining.”
Bookviews blog, December 2012“Trachtenberg is a talented writer who tackles subjects in ways that often make readers say ‘That’s me’ or ‘That’s my friend.’”
FionaMaazel.com, item about book: “[The] most engaging, sprightly, smart, and moving thing I’ve read in ages.”
VIVmag, 12/13/12
“What makes [Trachtenberg’s] story truly compelling—and haunting—are the images he paints, the poignant moments with both feline and female that make up this dual love story.”
New York Times Book Review, 12/30/12“I’ll bet you a giant toy mouse that you will adore this book…But then, this is not just a pet memoir…[It’s] about the torments of grief and separation as much as it is about the nature of desire and devotion…Trachtenberg is an impish and intelligent essayist, his writing sinuous and sensual…Trachtenberg is an extraordinarily perceptive observer of cats and persons, but to observe, after all, is never to truly know. To his great credit, he embraces this, and his uncertainty brings the profoundest rewards. Not many things are better than a kitten, but a book like this comes close.”
New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice, 1/6/13“Trachtenberg ponders the mysteries of relationships—both human and animal—in profound ways.”
Slate Book Review, January 2013“Another Insane Devotion is a discursive essay on personal growth, a public exercise in private exorcism, and a collection of notes toward a philosophy of love.”
Tampa Bay Times, 12/9/12“[Trachtenberg] writes eloquently, insightfully and often humorously.”
Ploughshares blog, 12/7/12“This isn’t just a book about cats or about a divorce…Trachtenberg posits beautifully the idea that the things and people we love are sometimes as puzzling as the emotion itself.”
More Magazine, Dec/Jan 2012-2013“[A] wide-ranging memoir.”
The Week, 1/25/13 “Trachtenberg makes you care about his frantic search for Biscuit, a quest he undertakes while sharing musings on cats from Homer, Proust, and the Gnostic gospels.”
CatWisdom101.com1/20/13 “[A] moving insightful meditation on love, loss and obligation…The best cat memoir I’ve read in recent memory. The richly layered writing, at once lyrical and lush evokes the figure-eights a cat ankleweaves when they want to leave their mark, and this does.”