"In early August 1936, Joyce had sent his grandson 'a little cat filled with sweets' – a kind of Trojan cat to outwit the grown-ups. A few weeks later, while in Copenhagen and probably after hunting for another fine gift, Joyce penned 'Cats', which begins: 'Alas! I cannot send you a Copenhagen cat because there are no cats in Copenhagen.' Surely there were cats in Copenhagen! But perhaps not secretly delicious ones. And so the story proceeds to describe a Copenhagen in which things are not what they seem," said Herbert. "For an adult reader (and no doubt for a very clever child) 'Cats' reads as an anti-establishment text, critical of fat-cats and some authority figures, and it champions the exercise of common sense, individuality and free will."
The letter in which the story was found, dated 5 September 1936, was donated by Hans Jahnke, son of Giorgio Joyce's second wife, Asta, to the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. The Foundation has called its publication an "outrage", stressing that it has not granted permission for the book's release.
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