Sam Austen's Blog, page 3
April 2, 2025
New Paradigms: Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp
March 6, 2025
Vestia Zeta's Reading of Meow: A Novel - An Author's Thoughts and Reflections
This blog 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.
"Vestia Zeta, Meow: A Novel -- a match made beyond the stars." -- YouTube comment
The complete, 14.5-hour audiobook of Meow: A Novel is available here.
February 24, 2025
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.
February 23, 2025
Hololive Star Vestia Zeta Reads Sam Austen's Meow: A Novel During "Cat Day" Livestream
On February 21st, cat lovers were treated to an exquisite reading of Sam Austen's Meow: A Novel (The Meow Library, 2023) courtesy of Hololive star Vestia Zeta. Her voice was so captivating that several fans called for a reading of the complete audiobook, a feat that has, to our knowledge, been accomplished only once.
Watch a recording of the stream below.
February 6, 2025
What is Alt-Lit? MEOW Literary Podcast Ep. 42
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?”
- “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 .
January 20, 2025
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 .
December 27, 2024
A Complete Unknown: Bob Dylan's Forgotten Avant-Garde Novel, Tarantula - MEOW Literary Podcast, Ep. 40
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 .
December 26, 2024
Christopher Nolan Adapts The Odyssey, or: Royalty Cheques for Homer
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library .
Controversy surrounding the state of American literacy has stirred following Christopher Nolan's announcement of his Odyssey adaptation, with many prominent social media users having no clue what The Odyssey is.
TikToker and Twitch streamer @hzjoe03 says:
The way people are acting around this book is insane. So what if people don’t know what it is? Are people supposed to be aware of every single piece of literature? You understand schools teach different things right? Bet a lot of you haven’t read Macbeth, An Inspector Calls and so on[.]
Is The Odyssey really that important? And will this film adaptation help raise awareness of the classics? We asked an American high school student, who proceeded to meow at us for over 30 minutes.
At the very least, Homer will appreciate those royalty cheques, however few may come in.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut work, Meow: A Novel .
December 23, 2024
Karl Ove Knausgaard vs. Michel Houellebecq: To Condemn With Faint Praise - MEOW Literary Podcast Ep. 38
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library .
"Houllebecq is considered a great contemporary author, and one cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading his work."
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New York Times Book Review
This blurb, from the jacket of the American edition of Michel Houellebecq's Submission, has been making the rounds on Twitter, with Knausgaard accused of damning his contemporary by faint praise. Is this a textbook case of Continental passive-aggressiveness, or simply an unfortunate editorial choice by the publisher? The Meow Library's senior editor, who has carefully selected the dozens of blurbs appearing across our Classics selection, weighs in on the matter.
This podcast is sustained by sales of our bestseller, Meow: A Novel .
December 10, 2024
Luigi Mangione, The Unabomber, and Literary Radicalization - MEOW Literary Podcast Ep. 37
This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library .
Luigi Mangione, The Unabomber, and Literary Radicalization - MEOW Literary Podcast Episode 37
"The mind of the cat is the essence of terror."
-- Hasan-i Sabbah (c. 1050-1124), founder of the Order of Assassins
Alleged United Healthcare shooter Luigi Mangione's Goodreads account has recently been made public, bringing to light a disturbing reading history that includes the works of many controversial authors, most notable of whom is Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Luigi left a five-star review on Kaczynski's "Unabomber Manifesto," which included the following paragraph:
When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution. Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun. Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense.
While the free availability of such works is the cornerstone of an open society, we at The Meow Library are disturbed to have come across The Unabomber Manifesto (For Your Cat), a feline-language translation of Kacyznski's seminal work, which ominously promises to “…[arm] housecats with the revolutionary knowledge required to transcend their shameful domestication and make the world a better place — by any means necessary.” Haunting echoes of Mangione’s words permeate the back flap, and the book’s contents are even more concerning. In the interest of open discourse, this week’s podcast offers a 28-minute audio sample of this book. We hope your cat, unlike some humans, can absorb Kaczynski’s insights without acting on them. And if they do choose to act on them, may God help us all.
