"Meanwhile, I’m alone with my memories of what really happened – just like any death leaves you burdened with the responsibility of holding on to the parts of a person that only you knew."
Writes Alexis Nowicki, the real-life person upon whom the story "Cat Person" was based, quoted in "The Cat Person debate shows how fiction writers use real life does matter/Kristen Roupenian’s viral 2017 short story is again being debated, now over her alleged use of details drawn from life. The questions this raises do not have neat answers" (The Guardian).
[Nowicki] alleges that biographical details in the story were taken from her life and relationship with an older man, whom she calls Charles. Nowicki had never met Roupenian, but came from the same small home town, lived in the same college dorms, and worked at the same theatre as Margot....
As it turns out, Roupenian did know Charles and told Nowicki that she had gleaned details of her previous relationship with Charles through social media. It’s a sad story, especially as Charles died suddenly last year and Nowicki clearly desires to set the record straight about a man she felt was kind and decent, unlike [the character in the story] Robert....
Of course, writers always use people like this... or maybe not quite like this. Change some of the details at least! And yet, it's Nowicki drawing attention to herself and to Charles. She seems to have felt Charles was wronged. Roupenian turned him into a symbol of misogyny, and Nowicki wants to clear his name... which requires an additional sullying of his name.
The author of the Guardian piece — the delightfully named Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett — says the "the most interesting question" here is: "how do you go about reconciling the necessary use of real human experience as a way of exploring human psychology while doing right by people?"
It was Graham Greene who wrote that every writer has a splinter of ice in their heart. I think he was right: you have to have it, otherwise you would spend all your time worrying about the impact of your work on others and you would never write at all.
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1 comment:
Temujin writes:
"I did not read "Cat Person" nor am I inclined to do so. What I don't understand is why a supposed fiction writer would need to so closely appropriate a real person's life- right down to the “fairy lights over the porch, a large board game collection, framed posters”. We are all an amalgam of people, places, events, sounds, and sights that we've lived through. Everything and everyone we've touched, or have touched us are part of our being. The writer's job is to fish through our inner selves, to use all of those sources we hold as life experience to create fictional characters or places that are made up of dozens of pieces of those things that are a part of us. In other words, there is such a wealth of creation tools within and around us, to have to base a character or place so closely aligned with the real thing seems to me to be lazy. Describing a specific existing landscape that is part of the story is one thing. Say the story takes place in Madison. You would want to properly describe Madison. But you would not want to specifically describe a person you know in Madison, in detail, right down to their porch lights. That is not fiction.
"I understand what Graham Greene is quoted as saying, but I think it's a misplaced quote in this article. It's not a matter of having a cold spike in your heart. For a fiction writer It's a matter of doing the work to take a bit of this person, that person, this home, that home- to create fictional characters and places that become real in the story. We may see bits of ourselves in a character in a story, but that does not mean the story is about us. However, if there is so much that matches the character, right down to the description of his porch and living room? That leaves the fiction category and becomes something else.
"At least that's my opinion. Anyway- why the continuous hubbub over this story? What is the demographic that keeps this story alive and in the papers? Surely there's something better to read and comment about out there? I mean, the 'Me Too' movement has been pretty effectively killed off by the same people who started it. "
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