Auguries

'Catter lives!' An improbable classic of rural American literature, "Auguries" is the harrowing tale of fourteen year-old Catter Knopfler, who is removed from his home in the farm town of Vesuvius and institutionalized - until he escapes into the winter city streets, a hunchbacked fugitive in a stolen purple confessional curtain. First offered for publication in 1986 as "an uplifting story of incest, murder, and grotesque suffering," "Auguries" met with a chilling reception. No publisher would touch it. But like its doughty narrator, "Auguries" endured. Photocopied, passed from hand to hand, and advertised only by word of mouth, the rejected typescript of "Auguries" became an almost instant rarity of the American underground press. While reportedly widely pirated abroad in an unauthorized Chinese translation, the corporate-controlled publishing industry in the United States conspired for years to keep "Auguries" off bookstore shelves. By the time 'Catter lives!' began to appear emblazoned on the walls of the New York City subway, "Auguries" had transcended censorship, critical indifference, and its own gnomic title to become a mythic literary phenomenon.