I came to publication rather late in my writing career. My first publication didn’t come out until a few months ago. (I’m not counting college literary magazines, college newspapers, or the one time I wrote an article for the New York Sun and they put “NYU” in the headline instead of “Columbia University.” The Sun…
Author: Adam Katz
Lesbian Feta (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Little Cat Good Puns are Harder than you Think Yeah. I saw the “Lesbian feta” meme on Facebook or somewhere like that. Anyway, here goes. The strength of a pun comes from three things: Speed Inventiveness Grace There are a lot of puns on the internet. You have probably made some yourself. The…
What Do you Know from Funny?
The world’s great philosophers don’t fully understand funny. I discovered this in my second year of grad school. I was taking a class on the Canterbury Tales. As the semester wore on, I was more and more fascinated by Chaucer’s humor. Stop and think for the moment. If you name the top ten most influential…
Going for a Walk (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Going for a Walk Anthropomorphic Characters I’m more of a dog-person than a cat-person. But the idea of being a dog-person or a cat-person involves projecting personalities onto animals that… probably wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. We’ve all seen a cat going for a walk, or sitting on a cushion, or…
Writing about Writer’s Block
There are times when I don’t feel like writing a weekly column. This is one of those times. So let’s talk about that. I’ve had a bunch of writing students over the years, and I’ve found that teaching writing makes me a better writer. For one thing, when you’re helping people out of their writer’s…
Books that Matter (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Little Cat Reader Responses and Books that Matter What’s an example of a book that hollowed you out? You got to the good part and you just… couldn’t put it down, but you could barely bring yourself to keep reading. Maybe the emotions were too painful, too close to home. Do you seek…
Ashes
I wonder what it would be likeFor my ashes to be scatteredNo, for me to be scattered as ashesFor all the memories I can’t rememberTo come to the surface (becauseI’m all surface now). Eyes closed,I can see Davey’s living room. Grey carpet,Computer on the table towards the backStaircase on the right. Such a blandFirst memory….
Finish this Chapter (Caturday Questions)
Little Cat is reading his favorite book. He knows he said he’d go for a walk but he just wants to finish this chapter. And maybe the next one. Okay it’s not technically a book. It’s a catalogue from the local pet store. Little Cat thinks a “catalogue” is a book full of pictures of…
Bach & Beethoven: Oops I Made Rock Music
I have this friend I really like messing with. He’s brilliant in his areas–math, economics, music, athletics, computer pro… He has a lot of areas. But I can still occasionally find ways to put one over on him. One of our overlapping interests is music, but he is much more into rock music than I…
Lazy Weekend (Caturday Questions)
Normally, I Tie the Comic to an Essay on a Literary Theme. For Example, I Could Tie this to Character Motivation or the Untapped Potential of the Lazy Weekend in Most Works of Literature Not this time. Have a good lazy weekend, everyone. Unless you work in food or retail in which case I just…