Thursday, January 17, 2019

Cat Person - exceptional short fiction or just another humdrum story?

There has been so much virtual ink spilled about Kristen Roupenian's short story, Cat Person, that I felt I had to read it. Well, that's the way viral internet fads work, isn't it? The story originally came out in the New Yorker magazine back in December 2017, over a year ago now, but the 24-year old author has just published a book a short stories in which Cat Person also appears, so the fad has had a new lease of life (that's how the marketing of fads works, right?).
And, yes, it's OK, I guess. Maybe not the best thing I have read this year, and I'm not going to rush out and by Ms. Roupenian' new book, but it's a perfectly respectable piece of short fiction.
Why though has it garnered such praise (and citicism)? Why has it generated so much buzz, and become probably the first short story ever to go viral?
Apparently, it is being acclaimed because of the brutal honesty with which it describes the dating experience of young people in the 21st century, the awkwardness and anxiety of it all. It is its very familiarity that lends it power. For some people, it seems that the mere idea of story told from the point of view of a young woman is some kind of revelation, although I am not sure why, as there is actually no shortage of such stories.
Of course, not everyone has reacted positively to the piece. Some maintain that it's actually pretty ordinary, and that people who think it is great have not read enough short stories (and it does seem like a good part of its popularity is among young people more used to listening to podcasts and watching YouTube than reading short stories). Yet others think that this is a patronizing, even sexist, attitude to take, which it probably is. There is even a (fairly misogynistic) Men React to Cat Person Twitter group.
So, is it an extraordinary piece of fiction, a fat-shaming anti-men screed, or merely a passable but ordinary story by a reasonably immature young author? In a way, it hardly matters - it's just impressive that there is a whole debate going on about new literature. It seems to have been a viral event waiting to happen, an idea whose time just happened to come (perhaps in much the same way as Rupi Kaur's poetry became a best-seller out of nowhere). Whether we will still be discussing short stories in a couple of months time is much less certain. I have a suspicion something else will have snagged people's attention. Cat videos, maybe?

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