a column by 

Marius Sosnowski

What's in a column? Free associations? Anachronisms? The communication of an idea? Ideals? In “The Cat Inside,” a short short by Bill Burroughs published in the fall 1992 issue of the Paris Review, someone objects to someone else’s fondness for Hollywood’s pervasive sentimental wholesomeness by declaring, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it B.J., it’s shit. It’s dead mawkish muck and it destroys the truth under it.”