cat person

you, a nerd: have you read about Cat Person?
me, well informed on topical items: uh, he goes by Yusuf Islam now

— Five Bergolden Rings 🎅🎁🎄 (@BergoEsBueno) December 11, 2017

i liked this story a lot. way better than any recent new yorker stories i've read in a long time. really loved how carefully it depicted the weird atmosphere of a date (which, after all, usually happens with somebody you barely know, and often leads to weird situations where you feel kind of trapped, even if they aren't necessarily dangerous situations) and how carefully it depicted the narrator's shifting attitudes toward the guy. the ending was startling (for its abruptness as much as anything else) but after a few seconds it felt like the right way to end the story.

^^ i meant to replace my second use of "how carefully it depicted" w/ a different phrase that meant the same thing, but hey, that's why i'm not in the new yorker

LG and imago coming off like you don't know any women who are dating w/ apps tbh

LL and io OTM itt

i have seen the sort of thing that happens in apps, of course i have. i've heard from friends, read articles about it. i'm under no doubt it's intense and horrible, dick pics etc.

but this story features no apps.

that's an interesting choice tbh - she says it was inspired by a meeting on an app but she chooses to her meet him irl. i have to say, maybe this is sad in a "oh no our phones" way but i haven't heard tell of a friend meeting someone irl like in a shop or whatever, in years, or maybe even ever. meeting irl at a party or through a shared interest, maybe. that does lend a little weight to him as pick-up artist, but i don't really want to open that up again.

chooses to have her*

i liked this story a lot. way better than any recent new yorker stories i've read in a long time

i should add, so did i. said it at the start of thread.

but this story features no apps.

The kind of frustrated text strings that this story ends with are common in general casual / exploratory dating, whether via an app or not. They're just so frequent via apps that you would surely not be surprised by the ending if you talk much to women who are doing a moderate amount of interacting with men in the text-y era.

(talk much about their experiences, I mean; not trying to imply you're an incipient cat person who doesn't interact with women at all!)

gonna stfu though bcz Lechera & Laurel have said everything relevant already, and more usefully

i just don't t think you can accuse people of not knowing about what happens in apps, then when it's pointed out there are no apps in this story, say "well i meant texts, it's all the same". it isn't really the same, when he's basically stalking a person who he met irl and then sending texts to her phone number. there's a hierarchy of communication and how personal it is, just as there's a hierarchy to our relationships with people, those we've never met offline, those we see every day, those we've slept with.

the question of why they meet irl is one i'd love to hear the author answer, just because i think it's an interesting choice in a story which seems to demand they met via tinder. to me that's why you mention apps, cos this story feels of that world even tho there are no apps in it. i think them meeting on tinder or something would have been really interesting and almost an open goal, his photos, their first message etc, so much interesting stuff to explore, but maybe it's zeitgeisty enough already.

How is he stalking her? He did stop texting once she/her friend let him know. Up to the last interaction, which is just nasty, and could be the beginning of something like stalking.

Apps are the ice-breaker so you can begin texting, and this r/ship is built via texts.

I thought this was good, on the whole, but one major sticking point was that she thought he was mid-twenties but he turns out to be mid-thirties and if someone is kinda heavy set and hairy and schlumpy in the way she describes then those two ages aren't really confusable in that way, or very rarely are. Or if they are it's that the guy you thought was in his thirties is actually ten years younger not that other way round.

but i thought this was pretty fresh, on the whole.

maybe schlumpy is pushing it.

Or if they are it's that the guy you thought was in his thirties is actually ten years younger not that other way round.

maybe she thought he was one of those guys who looks like he's in his mid-thirties but is actually ten years younger, and then it turned out he was just in his his mid-thirties?

something can be true and righteous and thought-provoking without being especially gripping or well-written. no doubt this does reflect the experiences of many, and i'm all for the discussion, if not the text itself, which i felt was too cartoonishly on-the-nose with its awkwardness and horror, and lacking in the oxygen of externality

It is good that a socially relevant, well written piece of popular adult fiction is enabling a discussion about anything in 2017. I am glad it exists!

Overall, though, I find the piece more "interesting" than "good." As an entry point into a discussion about sexual experience I am glad to have read it. As the presentation of a perspective I do *not* understand (college girl dating seedy older guy) it was well worth my time. But as a piece of structured fiction it was ... just okay. (nb: I am approaching this as a writing teacher).

In my work I have heard two distinct conversations happening about Cat People. But they are messy, and commingled. The first conversation is about the ubiquity of creepy dudes objectifying women and about the sociology of dating men; the second conversation is about the technique and story itself. Often, I think critiques of the story/technique/representation are actually proxy conversations in which dudes to push back against the first conversation. But I think both conversations are valuable and need to be had.

It's my guess that the virality of the story is due to the first conversation (i.e. so many men are creepy and not-so-secretly misogynistic). I think that fans of the story are reacting to this, its content, and the way in which it handles/represents the experience of a not-quite-a-relationship with a lot of realism. I like the can of worms it has opened. I've enjoyed reading (upthread and elsewhere) the articulate thoughts and opinions about gender/dating/identity, etc.

But the second conversation, about the story itself – which the author is certainly strong enough to bear – is where I feel comfortable putting an oar in the water. As a piece of fiction it is strange, and kind of unique, and I think it merits and supports a rollicking conversation. To belittle discussion/disagreement/reaction to it is paternalistic and snide (that 'men react to cat people' twitter irritates me), because I am certain the author will not curl up meekly.

my mind, in fact, it stumbles over its own intentions

(ignore the last line – that was a quote from a response I read elsewhere)

^^^great post, ty

It's impossible to entirely separate the two discussions tho - like say imago's complaint that the story is "cartoony" ties directly into whether that character feels real to us as representative of a certain masculinity or not.

the narrator equates robert's seeing more nude women with a fantasy of being with an experienced man, if i'm reading this correctly.

I don't think it's a fantasy? It's more that she assumes he has and is puzzled by his behaviour - which I think is meant to highlight how unexperienced she is and how little she knows about men. It's not a turn on for her or anything.

why pick a man who you're not attracted to?

You get to a certain level of desperation where you just end up thinking "why the hell not, could turn out to be good" (meetcute tropes reinforce this).

Oh, I know the discussions aren’t seperable. But quibbles with the expression... of which there are certainly valid ones ... don’t inherently suggest disageeement with the content (although they often are proxies).

What are the characteristics of agreement/disagreement with the content of a short piece of fiction and what moral conclusions are to be drawn answers to the usual address

Lol "lacking in the oxygen of externality", wtf is this bollocks?

There’s nothing wrong with meet/cute tropes. Xp

The fucking apps have ruined everything. People are out there trying to get laid in a context where 1.) there is no accountability, or incentive to put your best face forward, and 2.) it’s really easy to dehumanize the people you are interacting with this because they are words on a screen. They didn’t invent misogyny or anything but they’ve breathes more life in it during an era when trends should have been leading toward more equality. (Imho). They’ve ruined everything.

I think some of the negative male reactions to this have something to do with the category of 'creepiness', which includes stuff that can be considered moral failings or behavior that should be condemned (e.g abusive texts), but also stuff provokes disgust but it's also not really 'fair' to blame someone for (e.g. being fat, bad at kissing etc), but it's not possible to neatly separate the two, or how one might impact a potential lover's assessment of the other?

I don't think this is a failing of the story, and trying to separate the two would not be true to life (like some ppl were saying the story was 'fatphobic' and Robert should only be presented negatively for the actual morally bad things he does), but the framing via which a lot of ppl are encountering this story on social media is not as a piece of fiction which represents the ambiguities of real life, but as a righteous call-out of bad male behaviour, tweets about how all men should read this and reflect about their transgressions etc, I get why in that context men would get defensive about certain aspects of this and complain that they're being condemned for being a physically unattractive loser or whatever

Treezy what experience had you of dating pre apps for dating and I'm asking in a framing way not a shaming way

What are the characteristics of agreement/disagreement with the content of a short piece of fiction and what moral conclusions are to be drawn answers to the usual address

Sorry, I don’t follow this.

xps by focusing so intensely on the already-solipsistic central pair it failed to offer the relief or the mystery of external circumstances - settings, people, whatever - and perhaps by design, too, in order to induce a sort of psychological claustrophobia. i suppose the author succeeded in making it feel unpleasant

anyway yeah carry on treesh

My experience trying to meet people on apps has been mediocre but not terrible — women aren’t weird or mean on there like men are — but it still seems to bizarre for me. It aldo seems bad/frightening/dystopian to have like hundreds of matches lined up in an inbox.

I mosty think the apps are bad because of what I hear from my friends who are women. I think the technology has given a lot of fucked up guys the perfect opportunity to embrace their inner stalker, and maybe prevented them from learning real social skills or empathy.

Maybe my analysis is off the mark but I do think a piece of this conversation that is missing is how technology has affected the way people live. I’m probably unduly reactionary about various forms of social media, but still, I’d welcome more analysis from cooler heads.

fwiw online dating has been a boon to myself (when I was still in the game) and tons of friends of both genders: having a profile where you could advance a few starting points before you get too deep into the conversation was a lot less humiliating, and had less potential for disaster, than trying to pull in a bar. Never gave Tinder much of a go though, these picture + one line of text apps do feel a lot more transactional.

There’s nothing wrong with meet/cute tropes.

Whether there's something wrong with the trope-as-trope is irrelevant to the point I was making: there's tons wrong with using fiction tropes as a guide to how romance works in real life, and yet mostly we all still do it.

the framing via which a lot of ppl are encountering this story on social media is not as a piece of fiction which represents the ambiguities of real life, but as a righteous call-out of bad male behaviour, tweets about how all men should read this and reflect about their transgressions etc, I get why in that context men would get defensive about certain aspects of this and complain that they're being condemned for being a physically unattractive loser or whatever

This is totally correct but tbf at this point I feel like social media corrupts everything it touches.

Even in this story, this guy probably wouldn’t have dared to sejd that message as a letter or phone call. Maybe he would have, but probably not. People aren’t as careless with older media.

Self xp

Phone call probably not, letter probably yes (cf Julian Barne's <i>The Sense Of An Ending</i>, not that I enjoyed it much); the distinction isn't old media/new media, it's between facing a real human being and writing to one imo.

putting out the fire with gassy memes

Hey soda, great post. Interested to know (as a writing teacher) what about it you thought was "just okay" and "interesting" rather than "good"

But the second conversation, about the story itself – which the author is certainly strong enough to bear – is where I feel comfortable putting an oar in the water. As a piece of fiction it is strange, and kind of unique, and I think it merits and supports a rollicking conversation. To belittle discussion/disagreement/reaction to it is paternalistic and snide (that 'men react to cat people' twitter irritates me), because I am certain the author will not curl up meekly.

good post imo. i do think there is v little discussion of the story itself and the technicality of it, which i suppose is to be expected, most people don't care about that.

i also find that it's p common for people to focus on the political necessity of stories rather than the stories themselves. tbh sometimes this isn't that useful to the writer. last week somebody in my masters class wrote a story about a muslim teenager revealing to a friend that she's a lesbian. the discussion became so politically charged, both in favour of and against the story and the language used, that it made it almost impossible for anyone to give her any useful feedback or comment about the technical elements of it as a story.

i personally felt that that ends up as a form of prejudice in itself - she said to me in the pub after that "you can't even say 'islam' without a huge uncontrollable discussion happening".

i guess now the cat person author is in the ny'er feedback is not so important, but it's still interesting how something becomes a political football. l

(In my mind the story's small remit and use of archetypes works to the story's benefit - if you find it claustrophobic and bothersome, that's a sign of the story working. But without seeing more work by the writer, it's hard to say whether those limitations are specific choices for the story or a sign of the writer's own limits.)

i realise it's a major white male privilege to sit here and say "i just want to talk the technicalities of the story" but i also think the literary world is quite patronising towards less privileged groups, even (especially?) when it is praising or lionising them.

xpost

lol that i thought it was first person! in my memory it is. i gather the term of art is "third person limited"

from the first page of google results on that as a search term:

There are a number of reasons why you might decide that third person limited may be right for your next work of fiction. Here are just a few possibilities:

You want the ability to show a situation through the eyes of an interesting or unique character;

You are writing a mystery, and want the reader to experience the clues and outcomes from the point of view of one of your characters;

You are telling a story in which your main character's perspectives evolve or change, and you want to show those changes through their eyes;

You want to maintain a sense of uncertainty about other characters' motivations, emotions, or past.

check, check, check, check

re: something upthread about how he was not a stalker:
there have been abundant stalkers (from those who leave notes/gifts to those who hide behind bushes and wait for you to come home, etc*) long before mobile phones/texting/apps -- the impulse has always been there, just like the impulse to be a creep. both behaviors are motivated by entitlement imo/ime. going to the student bar and waiting for her in a corner by himself is pretty standard stalking. upthread someone suggested it might be the starting point of something that could become stalking. stalking is watching, waiting, monitoring. that's what he was doing.

i think one of the most interesting things about this story is the very true-to-life way she deludes herself into thinking he is someone more interesting/more kind than he really is. in some ways, his witty texts and performative kindness works, just a little. just enough :( even though she is in college, she is probably bored with her options. college boys are just high school boys with one or two more years under their belts and more freedom. this guy was an adult and he had an apartment and was witty with an air of mystery. and he responded to her flirtation. that feels good. and then after the encounter, when she finally realizes that this is not something she wishes to pursue and chooses to cut off her communication with him, it turns out he is not only disappointing, but hostile. tale as old as time.

*both things that have happened to me and my closest friends, just 2 examples of many

The story was inspired by a small but nasty encounter I had with a person I met online. I was shocked by the way this person treated me, and then immediately surprised by my own shock. How had I decided that this was someone I could trust? The incident got me thinking about the strange and flimsy evidence we use to judge the contextless people we meet outside our existing social networks, whether online or off.

My response above was to the specifics of texting as stalking. In the story it's mostly the usual back-and-forth with gaps in between, standard stuff between two people texting.

My recall is her noticing a swift response but I think there were variable gaps as time went on?

So idk, couldn't see anything, except at the end where he lashes out, where it could escalate to something potentially harmful. But as the story cuts off it ends as as proof of some of her later instincts turning out right

Xp ll

yeah i agree with that -- some of this story seems to be about the lack of accuracy of interpreting nonverbal communicative behavior (length of time between texts, response time, for example) which isn't all that different from waiting for someone to call you back. interpreting the silence.

when i read the end i felt good for her actually -- shame she had to go through the disappointing sexual encounter, but at least she had made the decision to cut him loose. that's something.

That’s an odd reading, if you don’t mind me saying so - ‘contextless people we meet outside our existing social networks’ is pretty much the definition of dating apps. I mean, there’s the context of hey how are you, would you like to take your clothes off with me, but you’re missing every other bit of structure.

xp to mh

not true, you will usually know which albums by bands they enjoy also

My response above was to the specifics of texting as stalking.

you said "How is he stalking her?" about a story in which he shows up at a place where she is, unwanted. i mean you could prob call it stalking when he goes back to her workplace to ask her out too.

xpost

Also not to forget that some of the observational comedy of the piece is very on point, relatable and funny. I definitely lol'd (with bittersweet recognition) at

At last, after a frantic rabbity burst, he shuddered, came, and collapsed on her like a tree falling, and, crushed beneath him, she thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made!