cat person

that review has quite detailed descriptions of the plots of a few of the stories just fyi

that writer, lauren oyler, is good. i've enjoyed her pieces for the baffler.

something about the existence of this cat person book is really depressing to me. i haven't even read it--just the two stories and the synopses of the other ones.

there is something super foucaultian about those two stories. the surface level of social interaction and romance--the moments when people are civil to each other--are in these stories just a facade, and right underneath is just power games/struggles. this is actually not far off from how MRAs see things. i can't live in a mental world where that's what life is though. i don't think it's true, even if there are grains of truth.

it's true for some people. sociopaths mostly.

right. i think a lot of critical theory can lend one to conclusions that people are sociopaths though, if you take it one-dimensionally. like, a lot of that stuff reveals power relations, exploitation, etc, which are fundamental to how society is constructed--it's all true. but also there is like, more to life than just that.

maybe the "horror" element of these stories is that they dramatizing the lurking fear that maybe there isn't more to life than what critical theory describes.

oyler is straight up terrible

sorry lol i'm gonna have to qualify that aren't i, tbh i became aware of her through her terrible lady bird review and her "dan savage: not so problematic after all!!!" piece for the outline was high bullshit

if she's gotten good since then i'm probably not going to find out by reading a cat person review

I’m not familiar with those pieces. The things I read were about social media—I forget what she said but I remember I related to it.

seems fine that you like her! not sure why i have to register my dislike of someone's writing every time i see their name, working on it

i haven't read these stories except for the thread's titular one, but if they're based around dating and interpersonal relationships i have heard so-called "horror stories" from both men and women over the years, but generally speaking only women have told me stories from that realm that veer towards actual horror involving power games and false civility.

loneliness of the middle distance dater

From cat person, the good guy, and the synopses of “the biter” and especially the thigh bone story, it seems her theme is narcissism. The characters relate to other people based on what they want from them—there is no real “connection” happening. Which, i mean, certainly that reflects a reality of human psychology.

But she also ties this to common cultural tropes, like about “nice guys” with the good guy or ambiguous consent like with the cat person, so the collection as a whole sort of appears to be addressing the zeitgeist and saying something about the way we now. Or if not that, then responding to the way people talk about the way we live now. And considered in that light this is a grim book indeed. Which isn’t in itself damning—I don’t need hope and redemption in all my books—but raw misanthropy, i’m not sure. That isn’t appealing.

What’s surprising is how many of these stories are about women abusing men. One story is apparently about a woman who conjures a man from a book of spells and then slowly drains his blood before killing him, but during it she thinks maybe she is in love with him. Is this just an allegory for domestic violence? Is it saying something about it or just reflecting it?

Like, apparently in the biter and the blood-draining one the main character reflects that they could get away with the violence they crave by saying it was self defense bc they are women and their victims are men. Doesn’t this sound like a feverish mra fantasy? Is it satire? I’m just not gettin it and I don’t want to have to read it to find out...

Sry for all the posts.

how is that a mra thing and not a couched fantasy about a woman getting away with what men do in a cliched manner: use women for labor and emotional support and throwing them away when they’re out of blood

like the entire mra ethos is that women should do quote-unquote traditional roles which involves domestic labor, emotional support, childbearing and raising kids

a woman straight-up draining blood from a dude is, having not read the story (caveat), violent but it is literally draining the life from someone in a way that’s understandable as violence — whereas exploitation might not be. that’s the rub, violence against a man is ironically a joke (women can’t hurt men with violence!) but sucking the lifeblood from a woman over years is accepted

like I want to read this story to make sure my take is in the right ballpark but reading “woman attacks man in weird way” as “domestic violence is ok if you’re a woman” is a weird blind take that ignores allegory

and, I mean, I had that ex that was seen in public hitting her new dude in the face in public so I’m not pulling takes out my ass

whoa, i wasn't saying that she was arguing that "domestic violence is ok if you're a woman"

i'm saying the character, in the story, thought she'd get away with it because she could accuse the guy of initiating the violence. it's a plot point.

this seems similar to like, the mra idea that women are the ones who "really do" have the upper hand. like, just superficially.

but yeah, maybe this is an allegory for how men treat women, and so by reversing it we're supposed to see how bad that is, or something

it’s still a facile point, mra fantasies tene to diminish the violent capabilities of women but elevate the idea of violence as a possibility

women are totally capable of violence but making it a weird sort of violence throws it out of the realm of probability

I reserve further comment until reading the actual story instead of doing the New Yorker/nyrb thing where we talk about stories based on what our monthly periodical says

i mean, i've read two of these stories and the other ones we got the synopsis from the review. i feel like i have some sense of the ideas she's working with i just don't know what she is saying.

also i think lying about male violence to evade culpability is a TOTAL mra fantasy so that's why it's interesting that it comes up twice in her stories, given the fact that they're super plugged into contemporary gender discourse. it's not the part about the women committing violence--it's the way they get away with it that seems to be a nod to this kind of "gone girl" idea.

but anyway, i'm not saying she is a misogynist, obviously, i just think these other stories are more difficult to interpret than cat person

she’s not every person and the fantasy of creating false male violence narratives does not invalidate real male violence in the public eye. there are a zillion harlequin/vampire fanfic things with spurious violence that blur things in more questionable ways, they’re just not reviewed in the literature journals

no but like ok

cat person and the good guy -- the two stores she put out to promote this book -- deliberately appeal to #metoo and other elements of contemporary gender discourse, like the idea of the "nice guy." that's how the book was marketed. so examining how she plays with different tropes about gender and to what end is something that book invites.

the fantasy of creating false male violence narratives does not invalidate real male violence in the public eye.

i never said it would do this and i'm not accusing the book of having a "bad impact." i'm trying to understand what, if anything, she is saying with these stories. i'm just on that level of analysis.

i mean, i've read two of these stories and the other ones we got the synopsis from the review. i feel like i have some sense of the ideas she's working with i just don't know what she is saying.

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, January 30, 2019 9:00 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cat person and the good guy -- the two stores she put out to promote this book -- deliberately appeal to #metoo and other elements of contemporary gender discourse, like the idea of the "nice guy." that's how the book was marketed. so examining how she plays with different tropes about gender and to what end is something that book invites.

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, January 30, 2019 9:14 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one would hope so, but as I said upthread, every other story in the book is horror/fantasy/magical realism. I think you're otm about her main theme being narcissism.

that writer, lauren oyler, is good. i've enjoyed her pieces for the baffler.

There is a very good crew of female reviewers at the moment. I end up feeling the reviews they write are often richer than the books they review.

cat person and the good guy -- the two stores she put out to promote this book

the book did not exist in any form when "cat person" was published. she was signed off of it. a short story collection is rarely a single mission statement, but is frequently a number of short stories, collected.

Jesus christ you’re tedious

She got the book deal on the strength of cat person. The book includes cat person. The story she released online as a promotional teaser was the good guy. The entire marketing around the book was related to how cat person struck a chord with readers and connected with metoo

Often there is some kind of thematic cohesiveness with story collections. Doesn’t have to be, true, but it seems odd to have a bunch of magical realist and horror stories, many related to sexuality, not connected to the ideas of the more popular two stories about sex, which were in a realist style and more zeitgeisty

yeah it is odd, it's why the book sucks

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-35/fiction-drama/the-feminist/

looks terrible but i can't know for sure bc it's behind a paywall. pastebin?

immediate takeaway is i'm glad i don't have narrow shoulders

i also hit a paywall after three paragraphs.

a cool twist will be if, in the end, he comes into his own and doesn't define himself by his sexual frustration. he can wear the label "feminist" proudly because it's rooted in sincere convictions about human equality.

very treeship post

I feel seen in a couple moments here but overall: wtf?

i'm dumb because i posted this without realizing it has a paywall. i read the print or i'd share.

he doesn't come into his own :/

imgur

spoiler: it turns out he’s one of those old incels and...

oh yeah, and we don't like those. sounds like a great story.

ok, the paywall somehow vanished. i read it.

this seemed actually like a parody of "wokeness" and the "incel" worldview, suggesting that there is a dialectical relationship between these two worldviews. so "nuance" i guess. i still did not enjoy it because the protagonist was a message board poster come to life. his interior life is completely dominated by cultural tropes—there is no life in him. if anything, this might be why women aren't attracted to him.

other characters are similarly social media voices come to life. however, his "woke" friend makes some good points in this scene--but does it cruelly, at a picnic in front of a ton of other friends.

He presses his lips shut while his brain feels like a swirling case of lottery balls, as his friend, pausing to hit a spliff, continues: “I mean, what the fuck do you want? Somehow you got a shit deal. Nobody knows why. Maybe it’s like you never really grappled with this shit because you thought you were exempt. But you refuse to change and are shocked when nothing changes. It’s not like you enjoy it, but you do enjoy pushing other people’s faces in it, that’s your main consolation. Weird how you’re always right about rejection, since nobody’s ever had it worse, nobody’s as pure and as wronged as you. Yo everyone! Check out the Woman Respecter! Last principled man right here! And that’s why you need it, because you get to convince yourself you’re being rejected for your virtue, not cause you’re a bummer. You’ve turned your loneliness into this, like, fetish necklace of martyrdom. And all of us,” they gesture around to other picnickers, “have to sit here and rubber-stamp your feminism. If we don’t indulge your wallowing, we’re being callous and, like, complicit with some diabolical global conspiracy that’s keeping you from getting laid. But if we do, then we’re ‘disingenuous’ because none of us will fuck you ourselves. Right? Am I right, everyone? Hands up, who agrees?”

Three women’s hands shoot up, followed more slowly by the rest.

i don't really understand the ending. is he going into that restaurant to shoot people?

what do u think of this story bamcquern?

yes, he is putting on his mask and opening a backpack with some sort of weapon in it

imo the whole venture does a decent job of capturing the way someone could fail to relate to others while fixating on all the wrong things and I think the writer has read a lot of material -- likely message boards -- to sketch this character. I understand it's a long-running montage of that fixation on an inability to launch and, stripped away of other life details, it becomes something insidious.

at the same time, there's not much in there about a job, other interests, or what social sphere is allowing him to maintain a group of diverse friends while never getting checked

He does get “checked” though—his diverse and left leaning social sphere are not very sympathetic to him. But also not helpful. He basically learns takes from them that he should feel bad about feeling bad—there is no meaningful advice about how to adjust his outlook and priorities to be able to focus on something outside his own shortcomings.

To the point in the maleness thread about a hypothetical person who maybe could benefit from some other straight male friendships, this guy might be an example of that. Normal, adjusted male friends who he could try to emulate, i mean—instead he goes into the internet to find people obsessed with the same issues he’s obsessed with.

Solipsism is a kind of hell, and this story tries to capture that. However I do think its too caught up in contemporary discourse to really be effective. The characters seem like types.

The story seems to suggest that his allydom is directly linked to his misery like maybe he’d have better luck if he were more of a sexist (or at least be more of a real human that others might be attracted to instead of this just woke empty cipher) that could then be remediated by feminism. Too evolved.