Literary Antimatter: Federico Perelmuter, László Krasznahorkai, and High Brodernism

“To read—and announce oneself as having read—literature in translation is to be tasteful and intelligent, a latter-day cosmopolitan in an age of blighted provincialism.”— Federico Perelmuter, "Against High Brodernism" (Los Angeles Review of Books, 22 Feb. 2025)In his discursive review of László Krasznahorkai’s Herscht 07769 (New Directions, 2024), critic Federico Perelmuter identifies a strain of literary discourse he dubs “High Brodernism” — the tendency of contemporary American critics to heap superlatives upon those “maximalist,” “difficult,” “avant-garde,” “epic,” “excessive,” “oblique,” “speculative,” “experimental,” “modernist,” “postmodernist” and “post-postmodernist” works favored by, one supposes, the “bros.” He goes on to place practically every novel ever written throughout human history in this ignominious category, with one critical and glaring omission — Sam Austen’s Meow: A Novel (The Meow Library, 2023). In this podcast, we punish his ignorance with the stellar corpse of literary antimatter that is Meow’s 23rd chapter, putting to shame Krasznahorkai’s inch-thick bloviations and putting to rest any debate about that which sits perched upon “Brodernism’s” loftiest summit. This podcast is sustained by sales of Meow Library titles -- classic works of literature translated for your cat.