Book review
Old T.S. Eliot really could do it all; he could write poetry to suit any mood or occasion. You want a hellish descent into the despair of a lonely, middle-aged man? Fine, here’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915). You want the definitive, epic setting-forth of the bleak modernist abyss, with countless literary and cultural allusions blasting at you in bits and pieces, like a radio forever set on “Seek”? Alright, here’s The Waste Land (1922). And if all you want is a series of whimsical little poems about cats, written for one’s godchildren? No trouble at all. Welcome to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939).
Many readers in the present day, of course, come to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats via the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats (1981) – one of the most successful musicals of all time. To date, Cats has generated over $3 billion in box-office receipts; it ran in London’s West End for 21 years and almost 9,000 performances (6th longest for any show in British theatrical history), and on Broadway for 18 years and almost 7,500 performances (4th longest for any show in American theatrical history). In terms of box-office success and cultural influence, Cats is a monster. And for that reason, it can be instructive, and fun, to go back to the little book of poetry with which it all began.
Eliot has a sometimes-deserved reputation for being difficult; when I first encountered The Waste Land as a college undergraduate in Tidewater Virginia, I found it daunting that various publishers had felt obliged to publish the poem complete with Eliot’s own explanatory notes. But one can check one’s lit-crit credentials at the door when reading Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Writing for a youthful audience, Eliot is working here to entertain and have fun.
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, in the best traditions of literature for children, takes elements of everyday life and infuses them with magic – as in the opening poem of this 15-poem cycle, “The Naming of Cats,” in which the speaker informs the reader that “a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.” We learn further that beyond a cat’s first, everyday name, and a second name “that’s peculiar, and more dignified,” the cat has a third and undiscoverable mystery name:
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover –
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. (p. 1)
It is the kind of detail that is likely to spark a child’s imagination – and it is rendered in poetry of a wonderful musicality. One need not have Lloyd Webber’s tunes, fine though they are, to enjoy Eliot’s poetry.
The cats of Old Possum are “jellicle cats,” with that mystical identity of which only the cats are aware. And the cats are gathering for a mystical confabulation, as set forth in “The Song of the Jellicles”:
Jellicle Cats come out to-night
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright –
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball. (p. 17)
I love that word “jellicle.” It has echoes of “jealous” and “fickle” – both concepts that are popularly associated with cats. A good poet is always aware of the rhythms and nuances and associations inherent in language, and T.S. Eliot is a great poet.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to separate Eliot’s poetry from Lloyd Webber’s music; and the more famous a song is, the more that is the case. For instance, a highlight of Cats – as I noticed when I saw it with my wife at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. – is “Macavity: The Mystery Cat,” which is staged as a slinky, 1930’s-style jazz number, with an Al Capone-looking Macavity flanked by two sexy gangster’s-moll she-cats. It was hard for me to keep the tune out of my head while reading Eliot’s account of this lawbreaking cat:
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity,
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there! (p. 37)
That’s not always the case, however. One can remember the way “The Rum Tum Tugger” is adapted for the stage – with the Rum Tum Tugger portrayed as a leather-clad, Jim Morrison-style rocker – and at the same time create one’s own mental image of the character.
Part of the fun of reading Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats inheres in savouring the poems’ vividly rendered London setting. One also senses the sheer joy that Eliot took in playing with language – in incorporating into his poetry all of the different voices that he heard in Britain and America. I enjoyed, for example, the working-class Londoner’s voice that Eliot takes on for “Cat Morgan Introduces Himself”:
I once was a Pirate what sailed the ’igh seas –
But now I’ve retired as a com-mission-aire:
And that’s how you find me a-takin’ my ease
And keepin’ the door in a Bloomsbury Square. (p. 56)
Cats fans, please take note: there is no Grizabella, and no show-stopping “Memory,” in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Indeed, that whole main plot of Cats – the one wherein the reason for the jellicle cats’ gathering is to decide which one of them gets to be born into a new life – is nowhere to be found in this book. So, where in cat-nation did all that come from?
The answer is that Andrew Lloyd Webber, thorough as always, went through T.S. Eliot’s other cat poems – the ones that aren’t published here – and constructed the libretto for Cats on that basis. With Old Possum, one is introduced to an otherworldly setting in which cats can express themselves in a variety of dialects and variations of British English; various cats do so in turn; and the book ends. It was enough for me. Perhaps it’ll be enough for you as well.
The edition of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats that I have before me – one that I checked out from George Mason University’s library, before the coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak closed the libraries at GMU and almost every other university in the country – is from 1982. In an evident nod to the popularity of Cats, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich commissioned artist Edward Gorey to illustrate this edition, and Gorey’s zestful, vivid line drawings complement well the playful quality of these poems.
I would go on with this appreciation of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, but I must stop for now. You see, our tabby cat Rory is nibbling on my right knee, and he simply will not stop until I step away from my laptop computer and start petting him. He can be quite jellicle, you know.
- Goodreads rating – 4.07
- FEEDBACK – Paul Haspel