Auguries

<I>CATTER LIVES!</I></P><P>An improbable classic of rural American literature <I>AUGURIES</I> 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.</P><P>First offered for publication in 1986 as 'an uplifting story of incest murder and grotesque suffering <I>AUGURIES</I> met with a chilling reception. No publisher would touch it.</P><P>But like its doughty narrator <I>AUGURIES</I> endured. Photocopied passed from hand to hand and advertised only by word of mouth the rejected typescript of <I>AUGURIES</I> 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 <I>AUGURIES</I> off bookstore shelves. By the time <I>CATTER LIVES!</I> began to appear emblazoned on the walls of the New York City subway <I>AUGURIES</I> had transcended censorship critical indifference and its own gnomic title to become a mythic literary phenomenon.</P>