This year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of a book that quietly (and embarrassingly) slipped past most literary critics but has gained in stature and popularity and will almost certainly be canonized among our most revered and treasured works. In 1999 the enigmatic “DK” published his (her?) magnum opus and then retreated into the shadows of anonymity, preferring to let the work speak for itself like a modern day Salinger. A work of limitless imagination which ranks alongside of Joyce’s “Ulysses,” details as exacting as the greatest of Tolstoy’s works, and narrative complexity worthy of Dickens. I am of course speaking of “Touch and Feel Kitten.”
At an economizing 12 pages DK accomplishes what it takes most authors to do in hundreds. At first glance the width of the book appears daunting, but each page is approximately 1/16th inches thick, making it a manageable read. Warning: the following contains spoilers. DK starts off with a bold attention grabber that immediately pulls you into a world of tactile inquiry: a hole directly in the cover which coincides with the hip of feline that graces the cover (the titular Kitten perhaps?); through that hole sprouts what feels to be actual cat fur. If you have ever felt a real cat, this book succeeds where so many others before have failed.
The reader is already asking: Who is this cat? What are the other two cats doing on the front of the book? Are they friends? Enemies? Romantic partners? Next DK throws us a curve: the cat’s tongue. Pink of course; but it feels scratchy? Nobody saw that coming. A less talented, less confident writer would have filled the remaining 11 pages with more fur, but that is why DK is celebrated the world over. Before you can even catch your breath DK segues from tongue to food bowl with a clever and effortless literary device that is so subtle the reader hardly even notices. The bowl is glossy and hard which is a perfect juxtaposition to the aforementioned fur. Bravo.
I don’t want to give away too much, but the story goes in several directions at this point, but suffice to say DK brings it all together at the close. “Touch and Feel Kitten” does what any great work of literature does: it helps us better understand the complexities of life, it fosters commonality, empathy, critical thinking, it gives us perspective, context and a deeper, more meaningful, more informed lens to understand an increasingly complex world.