Peter Trachtenberg

Peter Trachtenberg is a very good writer. In his ANOTHER INSANE DEVOTION, every paragraph is beautiful. But it meanders.

Trachtenberg writes in first person about, mostly, his cat Biscuit and his wife, F. He and F. have had and have more than one cat, and Trachtenberg TELLS us about more than one. And he tells us about more than cats.

Here’s the structure of this book as I see it: Biscuit is missing. Trachtenberg is out of state and has left his cats in the care of an irresponsible pet sitter. In between paragraphs about this dilemma, Trachtenberg inserts paragraphs about his wife, his other cats, and, also, many other reminisces, reflections, and ruminations.

It was too much for me. But I finished ANOTHER INSANE DEVOTION to learn the fate of Biscuit.… (mehr)

The memoir form built around a theme and focussed on a specific aspect and time period of a person's life (a perfect exemplar of which would be The Rings of Saturn) is not the newest form around, I suppose, but I think it is one particularly suited to 'our age' as these act as a 'time-out' where the writer (and the reader who picks up the book) gets to stop the action, go back, and figure out just what the heck was going on and how does it connect to anything else (or not). Perhaps I should say it is a form that our era needs, and I should also admit I like this form of memoir writing better than one where a person lays out their career trajectory. There is plenty of artifice, I suppose, but I like that too. By taking the time to try make sense of certain experiences - in this case the examination of love, with the lens focussed mainly on one woman, the author's wife and their relationship and his relationship to his cat, Biscuit. The memoir structure hangs upon a dark time period of his life when he thought it likely his marriage was ending. He and his wife were living far apart working, and they had to leave their cats with a non-cat person house-sitter (nice, but just not into cats) and Biscuit ran off, as cats do. So the 'action' of it takes place during the five days in which Trachetenberg finds out the cat is missing and decides to fly home to find it. In the meantime, of course, we wander around reflecting on the fickleness of love and cats, the difference between desire and delight, the totally unsatisfactory weirdness of of communicating by Skype (at least, for older generations who didn't grow up with it). The question that hovers, after awhile, above the page is ... are we any different, really, from cats? Are we any less wild and unpredictible and unreliable? If so, what is it that makes us love, truly? All marvelous questions. I may come back to give it a four star rating but I did find the structure annoyingly back and forth, as in, sometimes I had to really page around to make sure I was at year one, five, nine, present.... of the narrative and I got confused too about all the different places they lived, not that it really matters, I suppose, but I can be a stickler for that stuff. If you like thoughtful memoir and also cats, you will like this. Some of the best writing comes at the end as he brings his reflections on love together. ***1/2… (mehr)