Tigga please. Stop hating on the cats.
No no, by all means, let's talk about all the other ways to kill cats.
Impaling always gets short shrift.
3: You don't really need a lot of ways to kill a cat. You're thinking of the skinning.
Sure, if you're going to cook the cat and eat it afterwards. But, otherwise, that just seems wasteful.
America's war machine runs on negative kitten energy.
5: for that, why not ask an expert.
I'm now feeling a little bad, because I think ACM was bothered earlier by the cat-killing discussion. In your honor, ACM, I will not kill a single cat tonight.
If ACM were younger and more vigorous, he'd be interested in following up this inquiry into the connection between cat love and the desire to kill cats.
I'm confused... A careless reviewer who never read the sentences is going to announce that he never read the sentences? Or he is going to announce that he did read the sentences? In either case, why would a reviewer who hasn't read the sentences announce anything about the sentences?
A reviewer who read page 131 without reading page 135 might call Markson a cat killer, thereby revealing himself as a careless reviewer.
From this hasty overview, Markson writes novels, or constructions, that are some sort of performance. The way beloved ogged tells it.
You can click through to Amazon and take a look at excerpts from the book.
Your explanation has a veneer of plausibility, but I don't think it's supported by the text of that last sentence.
For another thing, the first sentence on p.135 isn't really so convincing. I mean, if you throw a cat out of a window, then you probably no longer own a cat. "I had breakfast yesterday... I am hungry, and thus I could not have eaten breakfast." Do you believe that I had breakfast? (In fact, I am not hungry and I also did not have breakfast).
Anyway. What reviewer would even take the original line so seriously as to comment on it in a 1000-word review? As I gather from write-ups, it's not as though this is strict nonfiction in which everything said about Novelist is true about Markson. And it's just one sentence.
In your honor, ACM, I will not kill a single cat tonight.
Oops! Okay, ACM, I won't kill any more cats tonight. I mean it this time.
The first cat line comes after a line about his annoyance that some people thought the facts in the books (there are others he's written like this) are untrue. That's why the first cat line is a bit shocking (and yes, everything said of Novelist is true of Markson). This seems entirely obvious to me, so I'm not sure what the trouble is. Alex is sometimes a girl's name, right? I think you're reading too much into this.
In this case, Alex is not a girl's name.
Not to continue a discussion that's just frustrating both of us, but you're telling me he's annoyed that people don't believe what he writes... so to get back at them, he makes up a lie?
Okay. I promise I'll stop fouling up Unfogged's comment threads now.
so to get back at them, he makes up a lie?
Yes, exactly. And I think this annoyed mutual incomprehension is quite site-appropriate. Carry on just as long as you like.
The wonderful thing about Tiggers? #14's the only one.
This site just isn't happy unless it's hating on pussy, is it?
I was told by someone who taught at Berkeley for a while that some students would put things like
_ Check here if you've read this far
at the bottom of one of the later pages in their longer papers.
re: 26
Never had that, but I have had students write little comments for me in the margin. Meta-comments on the essay, etc. which would reveal whether I'd read it or not.
27: Having gotten graded A+ on discussion groups on books that I'd read about 25% of before becoming disgusted and bored and stopped reading, your assumption of pedagogical prerogative in this case may be unwarranted. Do you think your students aren't all too often right to be cynical?
Also, my new girlfriend is getting kittens for her ranch house (she's legit; it's a ranch house on her horse ranch). I love pussy.
Michael Kinsley pulled a similar stunt when he was editor of the New Republic. He went to a bookstore in Washington and put notes in the middle of some hot-selling non-fiction tome, to the effect of "contact me at this address to claim a $100 reward." No one ever did.
7: the real problem with eating cats is that there aren't enough producers out there slaughtering them on an efficient scale.
I keep trying to convince myself that Unfogged is not the authentic face of hating on cats.
I wish that were true. But, sadly, Unfogged is its very image today.
26: In a manuscript, one insecure person pasted a pair of later pages together, then checked if the pages had been separated.
Isaac Asimov's retort to this tactic: "Dear Sir: When I eat an egg, I don't need to eat all of it to know that it is bad."
29: They may have good reason for cynicism, but that's both rude and inappropriate. Plus it doesn't follow the required standard format.
33: on the other hand, you might have an experience like Walker Percy had (scroll to bottom)
35: Eh, in that case, Percy specifically said he found the book "not bad enough to quit reading" at first. He has the same strategy.
34: I suppose so, and my own success at presenting effective academic bullshit doesn't really diminish the importance of buying into the academic process if you want to get anything out of it.