Counterintuitive

All right, ladies and gentlemen – buckle up.

Actually “sit tight” is probably the better idiom for this review, because it’s going to be a strange one; apologies in advance for the sincerity, but after, what, 30 some-odd reviews of cackling glibness, I think I can take a break from my comically malicious milieu for this one.

Now, stay with me here, folks: Tourette’s Cat is written by someone talking through two theoretically-distinctive voices, the idea being to avoid getting pigeonholed whilst debating; this sounds as though it would be cloying and gimmicky, but it’s not overdone, almost reading like the blog-equivalent to Adaptation sans the Kaufmanesque writing. That’s not a shot at Cat’s writing so much as an acknowledgment of Charlie Kaufman as the king... and, as you all know, nobody fucks with the king.

I say almost, though – further exploration reveals a depressive, pseudo-psychopathic earnestness that can either be read as film noir on a white background or an expansion on what was in those journals they found at Kevin Spacey’s house in Se7en. He deals with isolation, with loneliness and frustration... his craving to live in a time other than his own is palpable and just short of desperate. This, better than anything I’ve read, perfectly captures the illusory nature of insomnia, and it’s the type of writing that elevates the medium as a whole – eschewing the minutiae in an attempt to transcend the socially-disreputable blog form.

Obviously, the response I had to this blog was unequivocally visceral, a reaction, perhaps, that’s explicitly singular: he plumbs the depths of the dark places I’ve only danced through on my way to the part of my brain where hilarity reigns, and I actively fight against being this guy because, if not for a few lucky breaks, I am this guy. Take away my girlfriend, my inexplicable confidence and my genetic predisposition towards conflict, and I’m right there; I caught a lucky draw from birth, and Cat’s writing reflects that back at me. He excavates the primeval thoughts I’ve dismissed and sinks himself into a self-flagellating examination, and I find the whole experience to be fascinating, if not, in a strange way, uplifting; after all, once one has hit their nadir, the only way out is optimism, no matter how small the door.

Of course, he knows what he’s doing; this is an outlet, after all, and he’s self-possessed enough to vacillate between solemnity and silly, giving the entirety of the blog a solid flow. This isn’t to say that I’d recommend reading it back to front, however – like with diving, there are very specific points where one just needs to come up for air, and, as a whole, it’s just too much all at once. In fact, for a staggering percentage of the people here at Ask, I don’t recommend Tourette’s Cat at all - it should be evident, at this point, that whatever objectivity I may possess is completely out the window on this one.



Next week: back to our regularly-scheduled malevolent merriment.