The Cat's Pajamas and Other Stories
Language: English
Pages: 262
ISBN: 1892391155
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
An integrity gene is harvested from the brain of an unwilling schoolteacher. Christopher Columbus lands in modern-day Manhattan. John Wayne seeks treatment from a cinematic oncologist. Sports fans save the universe every day.
The Cat’s Pajamas is a provocative collection of satiric short fiction from Nebula and World Fantasy award–winning author James Morrow. Included is “Auspicious Eggs,” in which ritual procreation and compulsory abortion are mandated by the Catholic Church. Two original pieces were written specifically for The Cat’s Pajamas: the play “Come Back, Dr. Sarcophagus,” and the short story “Fucking Justice.”
Slaughterhouse-Five. . . . Such a summary as this can barely suggest the dense, hyperkinetic plotting of James Morrow’s novel, its welter of acute detail . . . or the vigor of its cartoonishly sharp-edged characters. Only Begotten Daughter is a rich, intelligent tour de force.” —The New York Times Book Review “Imagine, if you will, Joseph Heller at his satirical best writing The Satanic Verses. Sort of a Catechism-22. What you would have would be close to James Morrow’s Only Begotten Daughter, a
footlocker from which the eye had come. He’s testing me, Pothinos thought. Daring me to make him pack up his bizarre trophy and leave. “Bring it here.” After walking past heaps of cryule vials and titer boxes, Pothinos opened the main freezer, pushed aside the tissue cultures, and cleared a space for the unblinking eye. “Your reputation circles the earth,” said Stragon, starting forward, salver in hand. “When I heard how you violated that rabbit”—he set the ice pyramid in the
on the spot? “Well, Stephen? Would the archbishop have been angry?” “Perhaps,” he confesses. In his mind he sees Madeleine Dunfey’s submerged mouth, bubble following bubble like beads strung along a rosary. “There’s no microphone in my navel,” Valerie asserts, alluding to a common Immortality Corps ploy. “I’m not a spy.” “Never said you were.” “You were thinking it. I could tell by the cant of your eyebrows.” She kisses him on the mouth, deeply, wetly. “Did Roger ever learn to hold his
tomatoes. MAURICE: (non sequitur) I miss the desires themselves more than I miss their fulfillment. Still holding his dirt, Maurice exits toward the kitchen. As before, Arabella speaks directly to the audience. ARABELLA: When a person has the power to raise the dead, she develops a strong sense of obligation to the living. In the old days, a zombie queen would use her corpses to help out the workers in the sugarcane fields and the tin mines. Arabella hefts the cantaloupe. ARABELLA: (cont’d)
favoring either the Phobosian or the Deimosian worldview.” “You mean we could end this nightmare by supplying the Martians with some crackerjack reasons why theistic revelation is the case?” I said. “Either that, or some crackerjack reasons why scientific materialism is the case,” said Melvin. “I realize it’s fashionable these days to speak of an emergent compatibility between the two idioms, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the concept of materialistic