THE CAT INSIDE

The septuagenarian beatnik would seem to be the least likely author of a cat book, but Burroughs has clearly mellowed some and here celebrates his favorite "psychic companions." Full of sentimental anecdotes and bizarre pseudo-scholarly lore, his slim essay is, in his view, "an allegory, in which the writer's past life is presented to him in a cat charade." Fans will indeed appreciate the references to beat legend, and the cats who witnessed those days in Tangier, Morocco, and Mexico City. The usual gang of suspects makes the briefest of cameos, from Allen Ginsberg to Jane Bowles. And then there are Burroughs's cats—Ruski, Fletch, Horatio, Wimpy, et al.—none of whom does anything beyond acting like a cat. Of course, Burroughs adds some incoherent stuff about dogs (with their "vilest coprographic perversions") and about cats as natural enemies of the State. Lurid dreams of hybrids and mutants fill out a book also concerned with "cuteness ratings." The hipster's (and hepcat's) answer to Cleveland Amory.