I finally got around to reading "Cat Person" , the Kristen Roupenian story thats gone viral after appearing in the "New Yorker". It's a good story. Suggest you read it first, before reading this.
Ok, where were we. The protagonist of the story is a student, 20 years old (this is an important plot point), who works at a concession stand at a cinema. A guy comes in - in his thirties - but we only get that later - and buys some liquorice. She makes a witty comment. The story is self-aware. "Flirting with her customers was a habit she'd picked up back when she worked as a barista, and it helped with tips. She didn't earn tips at the movie theatre, but the job was boring otherwise, and she think that Robert was cute." It's not first person, but it may as well be. The reader is told she is flirting though - the line wasnt that funny so it needed telling - and importantly "Robert was cute." This is almost old fashioned - pre-Tinder dating if you like. It's also contentious - of course the pretty young girl makes nice with the customers - but isn't it the older man's arrogance and entitlement that expects a nice remark to move on to something else? Robert makes the next move and gets her number - but the relationship is then a text one. (I get the feeling its an old story - or maybe the social media interactions of today wouldn't be so easy to create a tension about.) One thing leads to another, but of course the story has a twist or two - he's a bad kisser; and not put off by that; she finds out he's bad in bed as well - at the time they're having sex and she really doesn't want to do this anymore. He, on the other hand is not quite the slightly awkward older man (in his thirties, so not that old) he starts out as, but keeps going on about her breasts. Its part funny, part cringeworthy, but it reads like a missive from the dating frontline.
This, I think, is why its been so popular (Roupenian has now just inked a massive deal - good luck on her, its a rare talent to communicate to a mass audience via a short story.) Yet its also a very New Yorker story. It's not hard to think of Margot as being one of Lorrie Moore's small town heroine's from the eighties, lonely in a strange town. The relationship story is a commonplace - but ever more so with more celebrity writers. The breezy style is part Helen Fielding, part Candace Bushell. I've read similar in Molly Ringwald's collection, or with a weirder slant in May-Lan Tan's "Things to Make or Break." Those stories though, felt more fictional than this one. In some way's this story is being read as if it is non-fiction. This is perhaps David Shields' view in "Reality Hunger" - that fiction has had its day - breaking through.
Like I said, I liked the story. I'm impressed it got picked out for the New Yorker, though its not exactly an outlier for them, and presume that the writer had already some track record, or backing. It almost reads like its precision-tuned for the age, but like I said its kind of old fashioned as well. To British ears, Margot's naivety is what comes to mind. She doesn't seem to have friends - at least not whilst she's dating Robert - later, her friends steer her away from him, when he appears in the student bar. She imagines telling a future boyfriend about this "urgh" experience. Robert has two cats - but we don't see them on the one time she visits his place. That sexual experience comes out of them being turned away from a bar because she hasn't got an ID on her. One forgets the American weirdness around alcohol. (Don't think anyone at my university would have had sex,if there was no alcohol before 21.)
I've always felt the best stories have the ring of truth but may not be true. I'm sure this is more than just a diary item memorialised, but there is an bit of prurience about the story's popularity. It's been used as if - in the days of Harvey Weinstein et al - this, which is after all a story about consensual, but unsatisfactory sex, which the girl then chooses to use as an end to their relationship. I was reminded of a couple of stories I wrote a few years ago which were similar missives from the dating frontline. Maybe I should send them off again....
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