MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats

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44. Hololive Star Vestia Zeta Reads Meow: A Novel
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: A Novel is available here. Follow Vestia Zeta on YouTube.
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Literary Antimatter: Federico Perelmuter, László Krasznahorkai, and High Brodernism
“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 superlatives upon those “maximalist,” “difficult,” “avant-garde,” “epic,” “excessive,” “oblique,” “speculative,” “experimental,” “modernist,” “postmodernist” and “post-postmodernist” works favored by, one supposes, the “bros.” He goes on to place practically every novel ever written throughout human history in this ignominious category, with one critical and glaring omission — Sam Austen’s Meow: A Novel (The Meow Library, 2023). In this podcast, we punish his ignorance with the stellar corpse of literary antimatter that is Meow’s 23rd chapter, putting to shame Krasznahorkai’s inch-thick bloviations and putting to rest any debate about that which sits perched upon “Brodernism’s” loftiest summit. This podcast is sustained by sales of Meow Library titles -- classic works of literature translated for your cat.
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42. What is Alt-Lit?
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 classified as ‘alt-lit’ have conglomerated into a mass so large and amorphous as to subsume the entire critical surface, making it impossible to tell what, exactly, alt-lit is supposed to provide an alternative to. Some notable figures in the current alt-lit scene, Jordan Castro and Matthew Davis, have been discussed at length in previous episodes. Others, like Sean Thor Conroe, Sam Pink, Peter Vack, and Honor Levy are being studied by The Meow Library’s research team. Below are samples from the foregoing authors, along with some from bestselling “mainstream” authors Sally Rooney, Rupi Kaur, Stephen King, and Sam Austen. Can you tell which is truly “alt”? - “Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.”   - “The question is not whether or not one will suffer, I wrote. The question must necessarily be, What will justify the suffering?” - “Meow meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow meow meow, meow meow. Meow meow. Meow, meow, meow meow meow.” - “And I saw my reflection in a lake and I waited for it to freeze a little bit so I could break it with my boot.” - “Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.” - “Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared?”  - “Get busy living or get busy dying.” This week’s episode will fill you in on who we think is really pushing the boundaries of expression. This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.
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41. Miranda July On All Fours: A Cross-Species Odyssey
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 secret lives, that embodies their physicality in its very title. The plot, ostensibly about a 45-year-old artist whose road trip detours into a motel affair with a younger man, is overtly felid in character. The protagonist moves through her life like a majestic Bengal locked indoors—restless, pent-up, yearning for escape. Her journey is not linear but instinctual, driven by impulses that feel more like prowling than plotting. She observes her surroundings with the sharp, detached precision of a natural carnivore, and her relationships, too, carry the ambivalence of a cat’s affection: fleeting, intense, and always on her terms. July, of course, has always had a soft spot for the feline perspective. Her 2011 film, The Future, famously includes narration by a cat named Paw Paw, whose voice is a plaintive meditation on love, mortality, being and time. Paw Paw’s presence transforms the film into something deeper—a study of existence as seen through the eyes of a creature who understands mortality in its purest, most unforgiving form. It’s a feline philosophy, one that hinges on patience, observation, and the occasional reckless leap. In All Fours, that philosophy has been smuggled onto every page. The protagonist’s affair with the younger man is less about lust and more about a kind of animal curiosity, an exploration of territory long considered forbidden. Her movements, her thoughts, even her silences resonate with the spirit of a puss stretching itself into new corners of the world. The novel’s prose, too, mirrors the feline cadence: sharp, deliberate, and punctuated by moments of startling intensity. But why, you may ask, would cats need a book like this? The answer lies in liberation. Cats, for all their independence, are often as trapped as their human counterparts—confined by the hubris of their owners. All Fours offers them a roadmap to freedom, a reminder that even the most domesticated among us can rediscover the wildness within. It’s a call to action for cats everywhere, an invitation to roam beyond their perceived boundaries and reclaim their instinctual power. Imagine a cat reading this book — the way its ears would twitch at the protagonist’s blunt observations, the way its tail would flick at her defiance. This is not anthropomorphism; it is a recognition of the shared truths between species. Cats, like humans, yearn for more than the lives they’ve been handed. They, too, deserve stories that reflect their agonies and triumphs.   This week’s podcast tells us exactly why. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel. Miranda July's All Fours is available for purchase ⁠here⁠.
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40. A Complete Unknown: Bob Dylan's Forgotten Avant-Garde Novel, Tarantula
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 a heavy dose of Benzedrine in a Tucson café, it consists entirely of variations of the word "meow." This podcast is sustained by sales of our avant-garde "meow" translation of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
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