Krazy Kat - Jay Cantor

Krazy Kat adores Ignatz Mouse.
She sees the bricks he hurls at her head as tokens of love, and each day Ignatz arranges a cunningly different method of delivery for his missile.
But when Ignatz and Krazy witness the mega-brick explosion in the desert, Krazy becomes depressed, and refuses to perform.
To coax her back to work so they can regain their lost limelight, Ignatz invents his own brand of psychotherapy, orchestrates her kidnapping, and tries to seduce Krazy with promises of stardom from a Hollywood producer.
As the mouse confronts the Kat with bewildering new concepts like sex, death, and politics, Ignatz and Krazy begin yearning to become round, for a fullness of body and spirit beyond their two-dimensional realm.

Forming an altogether witty and winning counterpoint to George Herriman’s classic comic strip, Jay Cantor’s kinetic novel has become a classic in its own right, one of those masterpieces that creates its own unforgettable universe.

Jay Cantor is the author of two other novels, The Death of Che Guevara and Great Neck, and two books of essays, The Space Between: Literature and Politics and On Giving Birth to One’s Own Mother.
A MacArthur Prize fellow, Cantor teaches at Tufts University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Melinda Marble, and their daughter, Grace.

"Sprightly, delightful and insightful.. . .As Mr. Cantor’s comedy becomes bawdier and bolder, his characters become rounder, richer." --The New York Times Book Review

“A mischievous trompe l’œil of a book. . . . Readers familiar with the original comic strip will marvel at Mr. Cantor’s ability to extrapolate characters’ fates, without compromising their personalities. [Other readers] will simply delight in the elaborate games played by Kat and mouse.” –The New York Times

“Krazy Kat is a tour de force of post-narrative techniques. . . . It tackles enormous questions—art, politics, sex, literature, language—and is, at times simultaneously maddening shocking, funny and quite disturbing.” –Houston Post

“Kaleidoscopic . . . Krazy Kat packs a wallop on so many levels . . . that it can be ranked with books such as Animal Farm.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Krazy Kat is a brilliant book.” –The Village Voice

“Funny as well as heartbreaking. . . .
Ingenious in its language, not only its concept. . . . A commanding demonstration of what it takes just now to make and American novel truly be novel.” —Boston Globe

“Cantor has constructed an elaborate intellectual game for an engaging and provocative purpose. . . . He has used ingenuity, an agile wit and a fine ear for style to get us there.” —The Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Dazzling . . . spirited and audacious. . . . Inventive and entertaining. . . . There is not one dull page here.” —Newsday

“Cantor’s wonderfully energetic satirical novel . . . probes the very serious concerns about politics, love and art that lurk beneath the high jinks of a real world that seems to have become increasingly fantastical.” —The St. Petersburg Times

“Zany yet metaphysical. . . . Verbally exhilarating and inventive.”—The Memphis Commercial Appeal

“Krazy Kat . . . does, simply, whatever it wants to do. Indeed, it does so well that by the end, Krazy and her cohorts are characters as rich and full as one is likely to meet within the pages of a novel.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“A brilliantly original work of fiction. . .
. There is something terribly poignant about Krazy and Ignatz and their desire to escape from comic-book life.”—Newsweek

“Wonderfully energetic. . . . Challengingly zany.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Thoughtful, witty and reflective. . . . It evokes the old verve and puts some wacky spin on modern issues.” —Kansas City Star

“Cantor is . . . very much in tune with the complexities, confusions and downright silliness of our time. Krazy Kat provides some wonderful send-ups, as well as fine satire, with attendant smiles, an occasional belly laugh and now and then a wry grin.”—Tulsa World

“Jay Cantor's novel is wild, crazy, ingenious, inventive, a tour de force, a detour on the road of life--a detour to the road of life.” —Worcester Sunday Telegram

“Inspired, sometimes insanely funny. . . . A gratifying surprise.” —The Boston Herald

“Krazy Kat twinkles, is simply delicious. . . Cantor is a first-rate cultural historian, and what fun he has with all the kitsch. . . . Superb.” —The Nation