Liz Kearney: Notebook With reality so dramatic and surreal, we no longer rely on fiction to get our kicks
Magic answer to festive questions
CAN you put a value on going viral? It would seem that now you can – and it could be anything north of a million dollars. That’s the reported amount of the publishing deal just signed by Kristen Roupenian, the American author of ‘Cat Person’, the short story published earlier this month in ‘The New Yorker’ that instantly went viral. And those howls of anguish you can hear are emanating from short-story writers around the globe, who are more accustomed to being paid four peanuts and a couple of cashews for their efforts in an often-overlooked and decidedly non-lucrative genre.
But ‘Cat Person’ was different. A tart, depressing account of millennial dating with a decidedly nasty ending, it hit that elusive publishing sweetspot: it was fiction, but it was so effortlessly in step with the zeitgeist that it stopped you in your tracks.
Many people, reading 20-year-old Margot’s account of her rather short-lived sexual relationship with the much older Robert on their phones or laptops, mistakenly believed that they were actually reading a first-person essay, rather than fiction made up by a sharpeyed 36-year-old creative-writing graduate.
‘Cat Person’ demanded a response. You couldn’t, in the dying months of 2017, amid the debris of the sexual-harassment scandals, read it and not rush to judgment. Was Margot a naïve peoplepleasing innocent – or was she a manipulative coquette? Was Robert a good-hearted romantic who fell for her charms – or a creepy, abusive troll? Or were they all of those things at once?
They made you feel something: revulsion, pity, admiration, amusement, disappointment, hopelessness. A bit like reading the news, then.
Roupenian’s new publisher, Scout Press, has said that her forthcoming debut, ‘You Know You Want This’, would “explore the complex – and often dark and funny – connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.” If there is a neater precis of the dominant themes of 2017, I’ve yet to hear it. Neverthless, Roupenian’s massive book deal must be bittersweet news for the majority of fiction writers who are struggling to make a living. The UK’s Arts Council says there are fewer than 1,000 authors earning a living wage and is looking at inventive ways of supporting the rest. Literary fiction, particularly, is in crisis. Who wants to get stuck into the latest 1,000page Booker Prize nominee when you could be engrossed in the ephemeral madness that is Donald Trump’s Twitter feed? And isn’t reading books a waste of your precious time when there is so much to keep up with in the news – from the White House to Brexit to Weinstein? Therein lies the problem. When reality already seems surreal and frequently totally bonkers, we don’t need high-wire acts of literary inventiveness to get our kicks. We have quite enough drama in real life, thanks very much. That’s why ‘Cat Person’ succeeded; it made fiction seem like reality. And these days, it’s quite hard to tell the difference.
What price on keeping bookshops?
SOME of my earliest memories involve bookshops – specifically, the old Bray Bookshop, on the Quinsboro Road, where the wooden floorboards creaked underfoot in the dim light.
There was a warm, cosy hush in the place, particularly at Christmas, where the high shelves teemed with prospective gifts.
But bookshop owners are warning that they are becoming an endangered species. Even at the busiest time of year, online sales and e-books now account for much of our purchasing.
Liz Meldon, who owns the Rathgar Bookshop, told RTÉ radio that people came to her shop to browse but then went off to buy the book online.
It would be a tragedy to lose our local bookshops, but for customers it’s a tricky one. With kids of my own to buy for, we opt mainly for charity shops or keenly priced special offers from online retailers.
It doesn’t fill me with joy to admit this as I love them, but bookshops are frequently too dear.
And for most people, economics will pip romantic nostalgia any day of the week.
AS anyone who has ever spent time with a pre-schooler knows, they ask questions. A lot of questions.
Those questions become all the more challenging at Christmas.
So far we’ve fielded: How come Santa is in the shopping centre grotto and simultaneously in all the other shops that we’ve been to? Why is Santa so fat? How will his tummy fit down the chimney? Why does Santa live in Lapland? Doesn’t he get cold? How will he find his way to Ireland? Does Rudolph have any friends? How does Santa’s sleigh not fall off the slanty roof ?
There is only one answer to most of these questions – by magic.
And at this time of the year, that feels like the most appropriate reason of all.