cat person

*watches the whole internet be engaged in a piece of fiction for a change*

this was most unengaging read some jean rhys

Def recommend finishing a Donald Barthelme story fwiw

Haven't read this

i've read everything

it was poor

the narrator didn't really feel like a character, just an observer, a receptacle for the narrative. the story's sole purpose appears to be winding up/attacking mras, which is a noble enough cause, but the writing is kind of dull and the whole thing emanates a sort of calculatingly nihilistic dysphoria that brooks neither joy nor horror. nothing is left to chance. and in its obsessive recall of detail it comes off quite superficial

^^^too many adjectives

there are loads of good ny'er stories, obviously.

i do find it p rare that i enjoy the new ones tho. i actually found this more precise and readable than many of them tho.

tho tho tho

i read it -- i haven't read a short story in the NYer in many years (if ever) and I thought it was haunting and true.

that marks him out as slightly more villainous than if they'd just left him as a potential everyman.
as i read it, he had been sitting there stewing in the bar for a while and had been drinking. i thought it was a sign of what lurks in the heart of everyman and only comes out when he is empowered with a way to send a message and effectively have the last word.

when i was her age, there was no texting but i have no doubt that average "normal" dudes had many uncharitable thoughts about me. ugh this story stung.

#noteveryman

I am not exactly worried about its quality as a story (lol like I can tell) but it carries a charge, the story does sting for sure. That's a lot than almost any fiction you'd pick up randomly like this.

maybe - i dunno tho, i feel like texting someone "whore" and that whole last exchange to me feels kind of psychotic or at least mra/alt right.

i'd say a lot of men's sexism is less overt than that - exposing that, which the piece did a lot along the way, i guess, might be more difficult/interesting.

i just feel it's better when it shows the creepiness of the actually quite "normal" things he does, like the paternalistic behaviour etc, if he's this angry full misogynist creep it has less impact.

that just feels way beyond the pale to me - it suggests all his other off behaviour he is because deep down hes' this awful angry creep, rather than in fact the normal behaviour of an average man.

xpost i think if the story is trying to say "yes all men" then it'd be more powerful if it didn't end the way it does.

xpost to ll

LG otm there I think

The whole thing lacks any ambiguity really though

the narrator didn't really feel like a character, just an observer, a receptacle for the narrative. the story's sole purpose appears to be winding up/attacking mras, which is a noble enough cause, but the writing is kind of dull and the whole thing emanates a sort of calculatingly nihilistic dysphoria that brooks neither joy nor horror. nothing is left to chance. and in its obsessive recall of detail it comes off quite superficial

― imago, Monday, 11 December 2017 14:04 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hmmm what else sounds like

#noteveryman was good tho it were right good

the narrator literally announces she has told this story different ways before now, how much ambiguity do you want

(amking my way through the interview now)

re: the last line. Kristen says it was inspired "by a small but nasty encounter I had with a person I met online", later on in the same interview she expresses nervousness in trying to capture a younger person's texts. So maybe all of that explains the crude ending but I liked it -- from where it started to where we got to. All the witticisms and weeks of flirting turning so ugly, to this one word left like that. It didn't stop from the story from hitting a nerve.

Fills enough time before the next time Trump tweets his thing so enjoy it, says I.

decent story, i also don't think the last line is in keeping with the rest but i don't mind an attempt to swing for the fences.

if he's this angry full misogynist creep it has less impact.

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

i guess i just don't believe that is the action of anyone but a particularly angry misogynist.

lashing out maybe, or getting angry - people get angry in dating. but calling someone a whore is like getting into territory where the word "violence" doesn't feel a misuse. to think otherwise i'd have to try to justify him calling her a whore.

i don't think you have to justify it to understand that it's possible for a person who is performatively kind to find that his kindness is not rewarded as he thinks it should be, gets angry, lashes out drunkenly in a way that is disproportionate to the way he feels he was wronged. it did not feel ott to me, though it was an abrupt ending to the story.

I think the last line would feel over-the-top if it was in isolation but the string of messages before it makes it more credible, imo. Within the context of getting angry/lashing out there are still plenty of guys out there who have no trouble responding like that, doesn't need to be a MRA.

Also don't think this story is supposed to "wind up" anyone, feels like a very weird way to look at it imo.

only a really warped person imo. like it's p much a hate crime, what he does. anyway i guess we won't agree on this - i can't claim to have a full perspective on this story.

xpost

also she basically initiated the relationship based on his apparent (performative) kindness -- that she eventually chose not to pursue further contact with him after their lackluster encounter is another choice she made, one he felt was uncharitable toward him, so he lashed out in anger. It seemed like a conceivable reaction of a man who felt the control had not just been wrestled away from him, but done so by a younger woman -- which is basically totally realistic. Whether or not your average "decent dude" would hurl that word around casually is not really the point. Although personally I don't think it's a stretch.

LG -- even if you believe that "only a warped person" would say/do this, it's a sign of how warped many people (men) are. More than you think!

seemed totally relatable to me and her perspective seemed valuable. i'm not that guy but i certainly know lots of that guys. it's really weird that people are so uptight about either being that guy or knowing that guy that they have to get all captain-save-a-cat-person on twitter but hey it's 2017 i guess.

lol, quite possibly. i was beginning to say "nobody i know would ever do this" but i can't claim to know. i can only use myself as barometer and i know for a fact i would never, ever do this. i don't say that to morally grandstand either, i have no sense of myself as righteous whatsoever, it just makes me recoil and for me personally it allows me to then dismiss him a bit.

a bit like someone using a racial slur - i label them a racist and that allows me to distance myself and kind of treat all their other behaviour with more suspicion. i feel it'd be a stronger story if he didn't get this angry at the end. but i also feel like it'd be a stronger story if it was exposing the creepy paternalism or patriarchal behaviours in ostensibly "normal, happy" relationships. more subtle maybe but more interesting too.

i've spoken too much itt

xpost i find it v annoying that people are getting lambasted for saying it's a bad story. it's a piece of art, you don't have to like it just because of what it's about.

xpost to ll there, sorry!

apart from the ending the story was v successful at casting a kind of awful vibe where a perceptive, intelligent woman drifts from one impulse to another without feeling able to stand up for her own shifting feelings, or even declare them

thought the ending served well to show the dark side of welcoming objectification: narrator finds his reduction of her to a precious doll initially sweet and attractive but the other shoe drops when precious doll discovers inscrutable older guy is shallow/gross/a shitty lay

i think the final "whore" in there suggests that maybe there _was_ danger in those moments and part of what makes the story compelling is that the decisions she made, that had some grounding in her mind in self-preservation, may ultimately have been more necessary than she or we thought in the moment.

yeah I would think the specifics of the story mitigate a bit against reacting to it as some kind of universal takedown of men/masculinity, though obv aspects of it have larger resonance. idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.

if anything the part that didn't ring true for me was her fantasy of seeing herself as young-and-beautiful-with-flawless-skin through his eyes--not impossible I suppose but young people are more insecure than that ime. that said, perhaps I've just hit the limits of being able to imagine myself as the object of the male gaze?

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.

xposts

he's not -- i think it's supposed to show that if they feel shitty enough, or are drunk enough, or feel rejected enough, even the guy who seems to have it all together could lash out and say something like that. it's not beyond the pale for a drunk lonely pissed off dude to lash out and say something he will likely regret but be unable to retract. in the past, people could just think it. maybe say it to their friends. now they both have to live with him having actually expressed it.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, December 11, 2017 7:58 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is extremely true, and your other point about kindness not being rewarded is also true. lots of guys i've known over time, there's this expectation i think that the kindness they show (that no one asked to be shown!) is deserving of some prize or acknowledgement or having someone in your debt.

truth bomb

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says). that's like why it's a problem.

lotta redundant xposts.

idk maybe I am sheltered but 20-yr old college student meets mid-30s sad sack is not something I imagine happens too too often.
yes, you are sheltered. ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*, of which he was one. not a sad sack, but vulnerable. i might say that in some ways she took advantage of him too -- his attentiveness, his worship. she knew this, and it's why she was worried she would come across as a tease iirc.

I don't think gendered slurs are anywhere near the level of taboo in current society that racial slurs are. Like they should be but.
OTM x1000

*needy men

feel like tinder and the like (tho they meet irl in the story) have led to a lot of relationships with big age differences. i see this a lot now.

it has always happened? very much like the way it happened in the story! you flirt with some dude, he seems alright, you hang out, and then things go south faster and faster until whatever was there is definitely over.

ahem i am unfamiliar with this dynamic (pulls at collar)

i also think ^^^ is part of the point of the story

in some ways it seems to me a comment on the dark side of assuming sexual agency for all people when we are still playing on a field that is not just uneven, but full of landmines.

men who call women they've slept with whores are not ime some negligible subspecies of obvious monster and the story ending on that word highlights what's underneath "everyman" condescension waiting to be brought forth by rejection+frustration (as LL says)

it isn't underneath if he straight out calls her a whore, imo. it's overt. if you're trying to talk about what lies underneath a veneer then you need to show that it lies underneath, which is actually more insidious and interesting. there's a diff between thinking a thing, or having it emerge in your mind, and saying it which would also be p good territory for this story, whatever way it was explored.

xp
good points, thanks LL

it's underneath if it comes out only at the dead end of the relationship, after like a dozen unanswered texts, as the last line of the story.

also i think the fact that it connects, at the last possible second, the nuanced and pathetic image you have in your head and the image of an alt-right shitposter, is pretty deliberate.

ime one of the only truly powerful instruments a 20 year old woman wields is her ability to charm easily charmed men*

this is rly otm and i liked the stuff w her job at the art theatre: the way he blows up its sophistication first in flattery but gradually in anxious bitterness and insecurity was v true to the usual dynamic between older lonely men w what they think of as taste and younger women whose intelligence they praise until the day it stops working.

(the praise, not the intelligence)

it IS underneath!! he is hiding it, even from himself. it only comes out and breaks his veneer of decency when he knows she is no longer interested (again, her decision) he is robbed/"robbed" of his control over the situation and he lashes out (drunkenly) with what is buried beneath the flirting and jokes and attentive question asking and his urbane apartment and everything. anger at having his control taken away by a young woman he slept with, a person with whom he assumed (incorrectly) that he had the upper hand.

he is not an MRA shitposter -- he is a regular guy. otherwise she wouldn't have spent as much time with him as she did.

it's also a fairly difficult technical problem to have this mentality submerged but not overt when the story is first-person from her perspective

"Later, the bartender told me that he'd written 'whore' to me into the text window, but decided to erase it."

i dunno, i just think him saying that stops him being a regular guy. you don't just call someone a "whore". even thinking "she is a fucking whore" or whatever would be p strange. guess we're going round in circles.

if he's texting women calling them whores he is an mra shitposter, de facto.

i guess i just disagree with that

i think it's important to note that i don't think the author is portraying either of the characters as predatory; it's worse than that. this is business as usual.

The Horrible Twin

lol the poster art directly references the photo that accompanied the NYer story (with a font that feels very late 90s)

https://people.com/thmb/D-Z4q769sW6zWUTo7T4bf2GJS5Q=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/cat-person-poster-082323-288b858191b0498fb2d084fde6581d6d.jpg

this person still sucks

damn, Greg the Egg getting done dirty with this casting.

― Judi Dench's Human Hand (methanietanner), Friday, January 20, 2023 10:42 PM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm was very OFFTM with this one in retrospect. Knowing what we know now about Nicolas Braun, it's kind of like when Chris D'Elia played a celebrity who groomed teens on YOU.

Reading over my posts on this thread, I understand why some people don’t like me.

we all love you

it’s better to read your own old posts and realize personal growth than it is to read them and consistently think “this guy? otm”

kind of nice to do the latter a bit, too

if I was in charge of the marketing for this movie I would change the name from 'Cat Person' to 'The Ick', gotta move with the times

from a studio bottom line $$ perspective, this is a A++ idea

I can’t believe there is nearly 1,000 posts in this thread. Who says ILx is moribund?

One of my coworkers heard the word moribund for the first time last week! So if people are calling things moribund maybe they just learned that word.

I didn't really like this story but somehow I never got around to saying so in the 1,000-post thread about it

It needed more stalking and murder imo

people who use the word moribund sound bad. they are like cat person, who is bad

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Moribundmusic.jpg

xp Like Philip Parsons in the Times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lAQHCpbUDw

Idk why but for some reason when I think about cat person I think about bad art friend why is this

Both short stories controversial for twisting real life stories without asking permission

Both short stories controversial for twisting real life stories without asking permission

― Zelda Zonk

as someone who doesn't write professionally, i have wondered for a while how professional fiction works... i'm definitely a "write what you know" sort of person. everything i write is rooted in my real-life experience, whether i mean it to or not. anything "original" i come up with in terms of characters is just combining different qualities of different people i know, or looking at someone i know and using them as a kind of basis for a character... not drawing from actual incidents but thinking of a person and asking myself "what would this person say in this situation?" and then as i keep writing the character diverges from the real-life person i originally modeled them on. or if i am writing about an incident that happened, i feel like it's something that happens often enough and in enough different ways that basing a story on that situation is more or less "original". where's the line, i guess? i don't mean this as "discourse", i'm just trying to refine my process as a writer!

people who use the word moribund sound bad. they are like cat person, who is bad

― imago

how about "moribundity"

i use that word

it’s better to read your own old posts and realize personal growth than it is to read them and consistently think “this guy? otm”

kind of nice to do the latter a bit, too

― mh

future me hates me

well, i guess not "hate", but a lot of my "personal growth" has come from reading my old writing and realizing "wow, i have said and done some genuinely awful shit"

it's pretty hard for me to read my old posts sometimes. i have a tendency to be ashamed of myself, which isn't helpful to anybody, particularly me... idk, sometimes it almost feels like the whole "so a fool returneth to his folly" thing is a form of digital self-harm, like when you log on to facebook and see old pictures of you with your ex (or in my case, see old pictures of just plain _you_ in the before time)... i've never understood why social media believes that people want to be reminded of their pasts...

I’m about halfway through the movie — has anyone else seen it??

I haven't---please give us your take when you've seen it all, or as much as you can take.

so far the only point at which i said omg noooooo out loud and with genuine horror was when i heard the opening notes of "enjoy the silence"

ok so "based on the story Cat Person" only goes about 2/3 of the way through the movie. there is an entire section at the end after he texts her calling her a whore in which many completely insane events occur, including a fight scene and a massive fire and a return of the dog i don't remember from the story.

the parts that were actually based on the story i thought were pretty good and true to life, somewhat subversive in their unvarnished truth. the scene you imagine being borderline unwatchable with cringe is just as bad as you're imagining it. i like the dissociated self talking to the real self parts. the ending though? idk wtf was going on there. i did enjoy the small role of the woman from The Bear as the cop.

A movie about the author’s shitty ethics and the subject killing himself would be far more interesting.

xp yeah the movie is better than i expected.. i think the end kinda works in its own odd way… i think the movie needed a way to get margot and robert face to face again outside of the end of the short story.. yes it is slightly absurd but not outside of the (mostly)truth of the characters