Chapter summaries Alexandra Petri's US History Alexandra Petri

Chapter 43: The Waste Cat and Other Suppressed T. S. Eliot Poems

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter presents a satirical counterhistory of T. S. Eliot’s career: every major poem was originally about cats, but his editors forced him to suppress that content. Petri offers fragments from the suppressed “The Waste Cat,” a feline rewrite of The Waste Land. The first section, “The Burial of the Dead,” replaces April’s cruelty with a cat’s behaviors—dropping dead rodents, yowling, knocking over a vase—and adapts the famous opening lines. “A Game of Chess” mixes cat yowls (“Rooowrrrr”, “Miaou”) with a monologue about getting a cat fixed, while the editor’s “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME” cuts off the scene. “The Fire Sermon” devolves into pages of unintelligible yowling. The editor finally demands an end to cat poems. Eliot responds with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” insisting the speaker is a cat but that he made it subtle. He then offers cat-themed versions of “The Journey of the Magi” (each magus brings a cat) and “Murder in the Cathedral” (“Murder in the Cat-hedral”). The chapter closes with the editor throwing a blotter at him.

Key Events

  • The chapter claims that all of T. S. Eliot’s famous poems were originally cat-centric but suppressed by editors.
  • Fragments from “The Waste Cat” are presented, including parodied lines from “The Burial of the Dead,” “A Game of Chess,” and “The Fire Sermon.”
  • The editor repeatedly intervenes with marginal notes, demanding no more cat poems.
  • Eliot announces “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” characterizing it as a poem about a cat made deliberately subtle.
  • Eliot proposes a cat-themed version of “The Journey of the Magi” and offers “Murder in the Cat-hedral,” provoking the editor’s physical response.

Character Development

  • T. S. Eliot: Portrayed as a writer stubbornly attached to his feline subject matter. He treats cat poems as serious art, refusing to distinguish them from his canonical works. His persistence, even after rejection, shows a comedic single-mindedness.
  • The Editor: Acts as the voice of literary convention and marketability. The editor’s growing exasperation—from polite marginalia to throwing a blotter—illustrates the tension between creative whim and editorial gatekeeping.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Parody as critique: By rewriting modernist touchstones as cat jokes, Petri questions how literary greatness is constructed and which instincts get edited out.
  • Authorial intent vs. editorial control: The editor repeatedly suppresses the cat content, suggesting that what reaches the public is a compromise, not pure vision.
  • Cats as a subversive motif: Cats are used to deflate high modernism’s seriousness. The yowling and random cat behavior mock the exalted tone of The Waste Land.
  • The act of rewriting canon: The chapter invites readers to imagine alternate histories of famous works, emphasizing how much of literary history depends on chance and intervention.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is a meta-commentary on the process of canon formation. It satirizes the notion that high art must be solemn and that an author’s original impulses are often muted by publishing realities. By inserting cats into modernist poetry, Petri exposes the arbitrariness of what gets preserved as “great literature.” The chapter also functions as a standalone joke about T. S. Eliot’s actual Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, retroactively connecting his cat poems to his more famous works.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. How does Petri use the parody of The Waste Land to comment on literary editing?
    The parody exaggerates the editor’s role in shaping canonical texts. Every suppressed cat line implies that editorial pressure, not just authorial genius, determines which poems survive. The “Waste Cat” fragments show how trivial or whimsical early drafts could be before being polished into accepted seriousness.

  2. What is the significance of the editor throwing a blotter at Eliot?
    The violent gesture dramatizes the breaking point of professional patience. It suggests that even a well-meaning editor can be pushed too far by an author’s repetitive obsession. The act is absurd but underscores the real-world friction between creators and publishers.

  3. In what ways does the chapter connect to T. S. Eliot’s career?
    Eliot actually wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the source of the musical Cats. The chapter playfully asserts that his entire oeuvre was secretly cat-themed, blending his light verse with his modernist masterpieces. It also references his conversion poem “The Journey of the Magi” and his play Murder in the Cathedral, completing the satirical fusion.

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