The Decline and Fall of the Chatty Empire

By John Emil Vincent
Categories: Literature & Language Studies, Poetry
Series: Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Paperback : 9780228017042, 96 pages, March 2023
Ebook (PDF) : 9780228017387, March 2023
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780228017394, March 2023

A contemporary epic chronicling the adventures of Chatty Cathy and her band of has-been dolls.

Description

Injury the guide explained / is what / guides explain

Chatty Cathy, while not the first talking doll, was certainly the most widely known, and the only one elevated to idiom. This unauthorized chronicle of her later career luridly illustrates the perils of reaching such linguistic heights with so very little to say.

In The Decline and Fall of the Chatty Empire Jojo, Gypsy May, Marge, Tootles, and Cathy’s entire gang undertake an abject odyssey to celebrity. On their adventure, they have many picnics, listen to NPR inattentively, play charades, and discover sharp things hidden in love’s thick folds. They end where they began, unutterably broken and luminous.

Returning to the snarfs and loving exasperation of his first book, Excitement Tax, John Emil Vincent swipes left and right like no one else writing today. Because why would they?