Books in the news; The Cat's Pajamas and Witch's Milk

Alex Boyd on books and unloads a quick look at newly published material and the books of current interest. Your host is Alex Boyd in the cereal department at the University of Illinois Library. I usually find novels with gimmicks distracting. I always end up watching to see how often and how suddenly the author can inject them into the work without the tracting from character development of plot pleaded to breeze in the cat's pajamas and which is milk published by Little Brown uses tools so effectively you almost forget that he's using it. The cat's pajamas and the witch's milk are really two different stories linked by a common character who appears only briefly in the first and is the main character in the second. In the cat's pajamas the gimmick that story is the hero sells penchant for getting married. That is we're repeating the ceremony with his wife. She calmly accepts these frequent ceremonies but can never quite understand his need for them. Tell us all the problem is that he's always writing something either in reality on his constant fantasies and sometimes in both the same time. He never wins this fight yet

remains acutely aware of the show he is making for others as if he seeking to be observed as possible for the sake of being is as absurd as possible. Beginning of a story by a status all teaching in a large university. His Majesty is considered solid his career peer said and whenever his situation becomes dull his wife's anticipate often get married again. So that got mad so often the seed becomes meaningless and from this point Alice all enters into a campaign of deliberate degeneration jumping from one job to another with occasional financial success in spite of his attitudes. He becomes like an actor who cannot stop acting at the leap stage he takes on the role of a Southern jumper on a Talon street singer or Swedish gardener with equal ease as he gradually descends lower or his wife leaves him employment becomes harder to obtain and he eventually dies a most ignoble many as death content in the fact that whoever discovers him will never have encountered anything like it before. The reader is left to wonder why what is rebelling against obviously gifted. He chooses to immerse himself in failure before Titus all

dies he is reduced to living with a mongoloid boy and a dog in cultivated squalor has visited by a social worker who becomes the hara one of which is milk. If Hanks condition in cat's pajamas is not open question. Kelly's situation which is will never seems to raise any. There's enough sadness missed watching and sentimentality in his story to qualify for daytime television. Him as a crippled man who still manages to be a hit with the ladies and they have a strange but happy marriage for a while. The breaking point for her comes when their only child dies when. Telly cannot overcome this. She gradually draws from her husband and friends and a brief attempt at returning to normal living only causes her to become more acutely aware of the loss. When she finally into a social worker get her encounter with Alice Alice shows her to be no longer capable of reacting to chaos. The reality she found as well was so far beneath her dream that she refuses to face either any longer. Which of us all seeks to avoid what he believes to be the cruelty and falseness of life by making a

mockery of himself. Tell him it takes refuge in isolation avoiding any implication of grimness which is milk as did cat's pajamas as a gimmick that is of age to his best friend his compulsively secretive about her age. Throughout the story teller attempts to learn the truth. Her efforts lead to a furious battle between the two with purses and water hoses and middle of Main Street which lands them both in a mental hospital instead of in jail. Taken together these two stories illustrate the author's views on the married male and the married female both Tilly and Titus all have seemingly perfect mates yet are not able to maintain their marriages. The title of the story gives a clue as to why. The mail requires the indulgence of some seemingly unneeded diversion. Some men repair the family car once a week whether it needs it or not. Others build useless furniture Oberle five nights a week or even chase other women got us all just happens to always want to be someone else. Tilly by contrast wants what all women want to be a mother.

But she strutted in this in the worst way as a son dies at 11 years of age before he is chronologically or she emotionally fulfilled. Possibly non Donnelly this explanation is to sample. The cat's pajamas and will just milk contains much more meat than that. A short fast paced book. I recommend your reading it especially if you're married. Maybe you'll find some answers that I haven't. This has been blokes in the nose for Paradigm presented by Alex Boyd and sponsored by the Illinois State Library. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.