Reply to Subject of famous/infamous New Yorker "Cat Person" short story revealed

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "Subject of famous/infamous New Yorker "Cat Person" short story revealed"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Writers who claim that it’s normal to borrow so many true-life details that readers can identify the actual people on which characters were based are probably crappy writers. It’s not difficult to develop characters that aren’t obviously based on real people. And it’s the ethical thing to do. [/quote]

Nope. Just ask anyone who ever knew Philip Roth. It's just how it is. Except maybe, like, pure sci-fi fantasy that is all plot and no real character development.

This doesn't mean people have to like it when they're the one who gets their lives minced into fiction. Just, it's normal.[/quote]

If it’s normal, then the industry has a serious problem. Again, we aren’t talking about simply using a real-life person for inspiration. That’s fine as long as they aren’t easily identified. What happened here is very different. [/quote]

The "industry" (art?) has a million problems, but this isn't one of them. This is how the sausage gets made. Philip Roth was a good example upthread. You think the people he ripped off straight from life were always thrilled about it?[/quote]

I am the one who brought up Roth. And I think it can be both a problem, and normal. I have had a few novels published and I always cringe at the thought of the people whose lives I've "borrowed" from in them reading what I've written. But then I go and do it anyway. And I hope that overall, it will have been worth it - for me, for people, but almost certainly not for the people who are turned into characters. I've never had the level of success anywhere near Cat Person - I think my novels have sold a combined 6,000 copies, not exactly bestseller stuff - but I do recognize both that this is very normal (nothing to be shocked by) and also very hurtful for the people whose lives are cut up and used. I don't know how you thread this needle, if you both want novels to exist in the world and also want to protect people from writers doing that to them. I guess like this - someone writes the story, the person whose life was used for the story then gets their turn to say what happened. 
[/quote]

This is fair. I’m one of the PPs who knows a ton of writers but can’t claim it for myself. The ultra-defensive flinty quality of some self-proclaimed writers here is just lame as all hell. The discussion got off the rails publicly because some writers, some of whom have sold well, lost their shit and acted as if the Slate essayist was out of pocket for replying or reacting or daring to publish, and that, my friends, is some major horseshit. [/quote]

I am the PP and I completely agree. I used to be a journalist and whenever anyone wrote something mean about me or something I'd written, I'd try to say: this is the price of a byline. Well, the price of having your name on a book or a short story is sometimes people are going to be p*ssed off at what you've written - because they disagree with your vision of the world, because they don't like your characters, because they think you borrowed too heavily from real life, whatever. If you can't deal with that, then don't write, is sort of how I see it.

I think the corollary to that is, if you can't stand seeing yourself in print, don't love a writer. (My husband has taken that stance. At the same time he never ever ever reads what I write.) But the woman whose life was borrowed for Cat Person didn't voluntarily join up with a writer. She didn't sign up for it. I still think it's not shocking. I do understand why she's upset. I don't know - I get why people want an easy answer (the writer shouldn't have done that! no what she did is fine!) and I think that perhaps just like good fiction is supposed to live in the ambiguity of life, writing itself rests in that ambiguity, too. It's both beautiful and immoral. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics