You, Me, and the Violence

“Catherine Taylor’s wondrous book—its lucidities and extravagances telescoped into sharp sentences—imagines a peaceful future by digging into the perils of right now. To probe violence’s roots, she questions our infatuated relation to automatons; with poetic feeling, and precise speech, she contrapuntally dissects political passivity and thereby inspires her reader to dream of soulful action. I am moved by Taylor’s distilled language, her faith in eccentric investigation, and her beautifully articulated affinity with puppetry.” —Wayne Koestenbaum

“This is a poetics of daring redeemed from the experimental, a philosophy of caring reclaimed from equivocation. You, Me, and the Violence is the imagination fleshed out, reengaged with the most serious urgencies of contemporary living.” —Ed Pavlic, author of Let’s Let That Are Not Yet: Inferno

“Things puppets can do to us: charm, deceive, captivate, fool, trick, remind, amuse, distract, bore, repulse, annoy, puzzle, transport, provoke, fascinate, stand in for, kill.” In You, Me, and the Violence, Catherine Taylor ponders the nature of personal and political autonomy, focusing on the surprising juxtaposition of puppetry and military drones. In a book at once politically significant and narratively engaging, Taylor blends genres to question the roles of individuals within society and expose the gritty and emotional underpinnings of the seemingly mechanical process of a remote soldier.

From conversations with her own brother about his military experiences to Punch and Judy, from the original tale of Pinocchio to the radio chatter of soldiers in active drone operation, Taylor writes about family, power, and the “theater” of war in a voice both sly and sobering, heartbreaking and hopeful.

Catherine Taylor is Associate Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College. She is the award-winning author of Apart and Giving Birth: A Journey Into the World of Mothers and Midwives.